Let the World Smile
by Selah Ex Animo
Summary: Zelda marries Ganondorf for the sake of politics, and plays a desperate, dangerous game with a still more dangerous man to escape him. Ganondorf will not suffer the loss of what belongs to him by law. But Zelda is no longer content to be owned.
1. Blessing

LET THE WORLD SMILE

By Selah Ex Animo

**Summary:** Zelda marries Ganondorf for the sake of politics and plays a desperate, dangerous game with a still more dangerous man to escape him. Ganondorf will not suffer the loss of what belongs to him by law. But Zelda is no longer content to be owned.

**Ratings:** Rated T for mature themes, slight language, and disturbing imagery.

**Disclaimer:** The Legend of Zelda is the property of Nintendo. I am in no manner associated with that company. This was not written for monetary profit, but for love.

**oOo**

I

BLESSING

Once upon a time, there was a desert king who they called Mandrag Ganon, or Ganondorf Dragmire, King of Thieves. He was the searing heat and wind-whipped sand of Gerudo Valley shaped as a man, for he rode like the hot dry storms that prowl, shrieking, across the dunes; and he fought with the fury of lightning and thunder. His love was like the pounding wave, that rises from the ocean and swallows those who tremble at its foot.

This Mandrag too was beautiful, tall and straight, with skin the colour of jade and burnt umber, and eyes the colour of sweet wine. He was the first male child born to his people, the Gerudo, in a hundred years, and for this, they made him king.

But Ganondorf Dragmire was not satisfied with the fate bestowed upon him by the goddesses. He hungered for something more.

And how this Mandrag _hungered_.

He could not be content to be king of the Gerudo, for he had come into kingship through no effort of his own. As a male child, the kingship was his birthright. But he did not understand "birthright", either his own or another's; he understood only that birthright did not satisfy the hunger that pounded through him, hunger to seize and possess by the strength of his own arm.

Neither could he be content to be king of the desert, for the desert is too vast a thing to seize. He thrust his armies into the desert's heart, and made it bleed black, but of what significance were his victories? The desert itself was still untamed, for all that that he had conquered its people. No man could conquer the hot winds that flung before their rage clouds of killing sand, that would as soon strip the skin from the Mandrag himself as any other man.

The Mandrag knew this. Rage consumed him.

But the Mandrag's campaigns wore at his rage as much as at his youth. With age came subtlety, if not greater wisdom: he did not rage and hunger so transparently, that any who saw him said, "There is a man governed by his lust, a man who lives by rapine." But he hungered still; his rage became his hunger, deep-seeded and alive. He turned his face from his desert triumphs—for they were are as empty and stagnant as the desert air—and looked upon the world beyond his desert—a world of seasons, of colour, of fresh, cool winds that filled the lungs with life. This land belonged the Hylians, who many said had the blessing of the goddesses' favour. The Mandrag heard these whispers, and envy smote him in his heart.

There, he thought, in that Hylian blessing, and in that world of seasons, colour, and wind, was a land he could possess wholly.

But age had taught him subtlety. And so the Mandrag waited.

Word of his power had reached Hylian ears. The Hylians trembled at the rumour of the Mandrag's exploits, and they sent forth dignitaries to beguile him. They offered peace, in return for his homage. But Dragmire did not mean to become a Hylian vassal.

The dignitaries felt they had descended from positions of superiority, in coming to treat with the Mandrag, but with the passing of the months, and their welcome growing every more unstable beneath them, they began to understand the inescapable necessity of compromise. They saw the failure of their venture with the clarity of men who begin to despair, and they were afraid.

They sent, at last, an appeal back to the Hylian court. _The Mandrag hungers_, their message went, _and_ _only the most delicate of our treasures will feed him. Beg the king for his blessing. Or we are lost._

**oOo**

King Harkinian, Lord Sovereign of the Hylian Kingdom, was pacing.

The great hall echoed with the stomp of his boots on the flagstone. His advisors, twelve noblemen whose family connections and inherited wealth qualified them to think their king's thoughts for him, sat watching the king from the bench that had been assembled for the meeting. They sat beneath the shadow of the throne, which loomed upon a dais a full foot above their heads. Harkinian would have presided from that noble seat in other circumstances. But the king had damned all tradition with a single glance: he had, upon storming into the hall some moments earlier, snorted at the throne and snarled at his advisors, and pointedly refused to take his seat. He had chosen, instead, to pace, with his thick arms folded tight across his thicker chest, and his mouth set on an edge as unyielding as stone. He was dressed for hunting, and wore his sword conspicuously at his hip. It knocked against his muscular thigh with each step he took.

The noblemen were rattled by his fierce display. The king's entrance had not been unexpected—they had, after all, summoned him from his sport, just as he was riding out among the bristling spears and long-limbed hounds of his courtiers, off to hunt a band of bublins that had been lately sighted a league west of the castle. But they had not expected the violence of his entry, nor the fury with which he met them. It was not for frivolous reasons that the councilors had summoned him. They had made that quite clear in their message. They had hoped, at the very least, for his tolerance.

"Well?" said the king now. He halted in his pacing and swung, teeth bared, at the company. The words burst from him like a fire too long cooped up, and suddenly exposed to the air. "May I _request_ the _honour_ of knowing what you want from me?"

"Sire," began one of the advisors; he stood. "Our council has recently had word from our dignitaries in Gerudo Valley. They have begged us to broach the subject of the Gerudo nation with you—with all apologies—for they—we—have realized that the Gerudo nation is not a matter that can be satisfactorily solved by ourselves… alone." He paused, and what he did not say filled the silence. "Sire, my fellow barons and I unanimously decided that something… _final_ must be done regarding our relations with the Gerudo."

"Really?" Harkinian's eyebrows rose. "And not about the bublins that are loose in the land? Really!"

"Sire—" The advisor flinched away from the blue-eyed savagery of Harkinian's gaze. "Bublins… they can be hunted at leisure, surely. But with the Gerudo—"

"And can they not be hunted as well?" Harkinian's tone lifted; he sounded almost jovial. "Have the Gerudo been bothering you? Whoever knew the wretches ever ventured so far from their desert! Well, but I would be happy to hunt them for you, gentlemen. If you have all turned as weak-willed as women and cannot bear the thought of battle, then by all means I will be your champion."

"My _lord_—" The first advisor looked appalled.

Haarkinian shrugged one shoulder. "I kid, good sir. Nothing more."

"My lord." Another advisor rose, abruptly. "This is not a question of present marauding. The Gerudo have made no move to attack us. But they are growing strong, stronger than we care to contemplate. They are breaking loose from their barbarous roots. They have escalated in power and wealth. Their army numbers _five thousand strong_. And—"

"And they are made up entirely of women!" The king gave a barking laugh. "What do you fear from women, sir?"

"Women they may be, my lord. But they are ruled by a man, Lord Ganondorf Dragmire. He has lately assumed the throne once tended by the Lady Nabooru. It was, you recall, upon the account of this change that we sent forth another envoy to join the first already established there?"

The king ignored the advisor's insinuations. "I did not know the old hag had died," he said.

"She hasn't." The advisor paused. "The king has been away on campaign. The Gerudo way is exactly like our own, my lord: when the rightful king is absent, his throne is tended by a regent."

"I did not ask you for a lesson in governance, good sir," said Harkinian. His face grew dark.

"Forgive me, my lord." There was a distinct lack of humility in the advisor's tone. "I did not presume to instruct you, only to lay before this council the _facts_."

"But my lord," a third advisor interrupted, "think now upon Lord _Dragmire_, rather than his regent. For is _he_ not the most important figure in our deliberations? How to win him—a man who men say cannot be won?"

"Precisely!" another advisor cried, leaping upright. "My lord, our envoys have sent us nothing but word of Lord Dragmire's feats—how he drove his armies straight into the hearts of the Subrosians, how he subdued the Twili, how he made those people his _own_."

"He excels not only upon the battlefield, but in diplomacy as well," the second advisor interrupted. "My lord, we requested your presence this day because our dignitaries have sent us startling intelligence, and it is this: that the Gerudo have allied themselves with the Zuna this past fortnight, and not with war but with sweet words. It is not simply the Gerudo force of which we must be wary, now. Dragmire commands the forces of two conquered tribes and one ally—sire, I venture to say that this is more than we command."

"That may be so." The king shrugged one great, solid shoulder. "But Dragmire has won his battles against Subrosians and Twili, in the end—numerous they may be, but men of virtue and spirit they are, ultimately, not. Neither Twili nor Subrosian can bear the honest sunshine; they scorch like shadow beasts in the light. And the Twili are to a man criminals of the worst kind—dare to tell me, gentlemen, that these are men worth fearing! Why have we come to fear them and the horde of half-naked land pirates to whom they are allied—a horde of _women_, gentlemen?"

"Because these _women_ jump upon the order of a man who has utterly annihilated the ruling families of both Twili and Subrosian. My _lord_." The second advisor's eyes narrowed; his mouth was tight and tense. "We have dismissed them as barbarians for too long, and they may soon become a problem too large to contain. We must _act_ while we still can!"

"Sire!" This was the third advisor. He held up a hand to silence the second, and bobbed his head toward his liege. "We noblemen have long believed that it would be an intelligent move on your part to secure an alliance with the Dragmire family. But as matters stand—Dragmire strengthening his arm by the friendship of the Zuna, while our own envoys have suffered only defeat thus far—we believe the time has come to approach this matter with greater attention. We need not fear that Dragmire will spurn our olive branch if we offer it to him on his terms; what is the friendship of the Zuna, ultimately, to friendship with a people such as ourselves? We need only fear that we do not offer that olive branch to him quickly enough."

"On his terms? Gentlemen." The king's voice was cold. "I have not founded my kingdom upon _fear_. I do not _fear_ this Gerudo lord, even if you do. _I_ will not tremble before him."

"There is no talk of _fear_, my lord," the second advisor broke in. "Only of _wisdom_. Nayru is our patron goddess. Surely we must do all we can to glorify Her."

"Glorify? You speak, sir, as if you were in the midst of worship, and not of council."

"I speak, my lord, as a man who loves his country, and wishes only for its advancement."

The second advisor seated himself with stiff dignity. Those who stood followed his example, haltingly, and looked, all the while, askance at the king.

The councilors felt like men newly awakened to a world falling to pieces. They had never expected much from their sovereign: Harkinian was the result of a life lived too comfortably for a man who thirsted for too much, and he had never been truly cut out to be king. He lived only to pleasure himself, to imitate the idle bloodthirstiness of his sires: a life lived for the hunt, upon an edge of danger contrived by the restlessness that the tedium of peacetime had filled him with. He had ascended to the throne no wiser than birth had left him, impatient with the peacekeeping schemes of his advisors. He did not concern himself with the ruling of his kingdom, as a rule. And his council did not concern themselves with him.

But the question of the Gerudo made this impossible.

_Beg the king for his blessing_, the dignitaries' message had read. _Or we are lost_.

The third advisor was the last to sit. He spoke gently into the silence. "Please, my lord. Hear us. With Nayru as our holy witness, we will suffer no shame to come to you from this affair. Only… _hear _us. We beg you."

Harkinian looked at him. His mouth twitched, so slightly that the advisors could not tell if he scowled… or perhaps smiled.

"Well then." He tilted his head. "What do you mean to do?"

A sigh drifted down the bench.

"My lord—" A fifth advisor faltered to his feet. "All our attempts to win this Gerudo lord have been met with failure—except, of course, one that we have not tried. You have a beautiful daughter. She's quite eligible to be married, now that she is become sixteen, I believe. She has a lovely face, and she is demure. The Zuna have made their alliance with Dragmire in ink and word only. We may do better than they have managed to do—marriage and dowries bind allies more securely than even writing can. And we believe, my lord, that Dragmire will accede to that." He bowed and sat.

"But what of my own throne? Who shall succeed to it, if not her son by one of you?" The king eyed them. "That is how it has always been done."

"Her son will still inherit it," said the second advisor, slowly. "And he will inherit the Gerudo throne as well. They love their princes, the Gerudo. Some say only one is born every one hundred years. Our Hylian women are far more fertile than _that_."

"Ah…" said the king, and for the first time that day, his smile was not checked by irony, but unfolded full across his face. He appraised the faces turned toward him. "This seems a viable proposition, gentlemen. If this will solve your quandary, then let us by all means pursue it. Summon a scribe. And do not delay." He turned on his heel and began to stride toward the door. He called over his shoulder, "I believe you are satisfied, gentlemen? I will leave you now."

"Sire," said the second advisor, bowing to his back. "Your wish is our command."

They wrote Lord Ganondorf Dragmire, and sealed the letter with the insignia of the king. They accompanied this dispatch with an answer to their Hylian envoys, scrawled upon plain paper, sealed with unmarked wax.

_Let the Mandrag hunger no more_, the letter went. _Our lord has given us both the treasure of his loins and the blessing of his seal. Rejoice, friends. We are saved._


	2. Proposal

**oOo**

II

PROPOSAL

"It is a marriage proposal!" said the grandmother in red, laughing. "See, Ganondorf, these Hylians, they write to ask you—ask for your hand in marriage!" Her mouth made little movements, as if she meant to speak further, but she was clutching her side now, her words dissolving into hysterics. A pair of handmaidens guided her to a chair. She slumped against the padded armrest, and laughed until she cried.

Lord Ganondorf Dragmire sat enthroned upon a dais, staring at the grandmother with a look of idle humour upon his face. He held, between loose fingers, the Hylian letter that had arrived at dawn. It had come escorted by a retinue of ten men: seven soldiers in the gilt and gold of the Royal Guard, two pages, and a messenger, who rode in upon a stallion that streamed finery like a castle tower dressed for celebration. Ganondorf had dismissed all ten to a room within the stables when both pleasantries and errand had been dispatched, and had then retired to a private chamber to read his letter. He took only the grandmothers, Koume and Kotake, with him.

Age had dried the sisters into replicas of one another, in every inessential aspect except for that of personality. Ganondorf called them "grandmother" equally, because neither Koume nor Kotake could quite remember which of them had borne the girl who had led, eventually, to him. Such considerations hardly mattered.

It was Koume who now laughed. Her sister, Kotake, who stood at the king's right hand, peering down at the letter, shook her head in Koume's direction. A distinct look of irritation passed over her face.

"Din's blood, Koume, do not act the child. You shame yourself. What is there to laugh at?" Her tone was cold.

"Such a brazen bid for our love!" Koume gasped. She forced herself upright with a shaking hand. "Do they think we _want_ their wafer-pale princess? What does she have that a Gerudo does _not_?" She rolled her head back down on her arm again, laughing.

Her sister went stiff with disgust, and looked with helpless anger toward Ganondorf. His smile was thin.

Koume roused, at last, from her hysteria; she stumbled to her feet, and her handmaidens gripped her beneath the arms, and guided her in the direction of Ganondorf.

"Do not—do not _tell_ me you are still _considering_ the thing, my lord." Koume pulled free of the handmaidens and tottered up the steps. She reached out to take the letter when she had gained the dais.

"Why not?"

"We will have no truck with _Hylians_." She smacked the letter for emphasis. "_Hylians_! They spend their days cowered in their castles, flattering liege lords, flouncing in their costumes. Their king? He spends his days _hunting_. Deku Babas and Helmasaurs and the occasional Bublin… Pah. Call that a man? Call that _anything_? He takes no cities, no people. He's only ever conquered the poison mites that he steps upon, the women he beds. Hylian _chattel_." She spat down the steps. "What do we want with his Hylian bitch; does he think to cow us with his grandness? Impress us that he's a big man, can do big things, offers up his daughter like a sacrifice? Pah. He won his strength with treaties. Not with his own arm. _Pah_." She spat again.

"And what is our alliance with the Zuna, then?" Ganondorf asked, voice soft. "It was won with treaties, was it not?"

Koume offered him a crooked smile. "Treaties? Oh, child, they do not call you Mandrag without reason. No treaties won this alliance. The Zuna saw what became of the Twili and the Subrosians. They know where they stand."

Ganondorf said, "Yes."

"But if the Hylian king offers us his daughter, why then can we not accept?" said Kotake. She had begun to pace with slow, careful steps. "An alliance through marriage is certainly solid. Provided it is performed and consummated in the name of the goddesses." She looked sideways at her sister. "Even if we do not love the Hylians, we may yet be allied to them."

"And what good will that do?" Koume said, voice touched with a shriek. "Can any be both friends and acknowledged enemies?"

"We may yet strive to be reconciled, Koume. See! Their king extends an olive branch. He is willing to overlook past grievances, unspoken feuds."

"Unspoken?" Koume snorted. "His grandfathers spoke loud enough, when they raided our borderlands. Tried to rape our women." Her lip contorted with a leer. "They learned better."

"I do not see how they are only at fault, _sister_. We raided their borderlands. Raped their men. Did we not?" Kotake's mouth bent in a cold, humourless smile.

Someone knocked at the door, before Koume would answer. Lord Ganondorf, who had been watching the sisters with an unreadable expression, glanced toward the door.

"Yes?"

"My lord." The door opened, and a girl bowed her way inside. "The Lady Nabooru would attend you."

"She may attend."

The girl retreated, and was replaced by a tall, long-limbed woman. Her face was stiffly inexpressive, her back straight as steel; she moved with sharp, jerky movements, as if upon her sat an ill-fitting confidence that governed her by contradiction: she was painted and dressed in all the elaborate wealth of nobility, and yet held herself like a foot soldier, all caution and discomfort before the presence of royalty.

"Dra—Majesty." The word came awkwardly, as if its shape were foreign in her mouth; she recollected herself, and swept a bow. Her waist-length hair flowed across her shoulders, a flood of scarlet tipped in gold plating. Her face was a palette of colour: lips as red as grapefruits, cheeks brushed in gold, lips painted silver. Her natural beauty had been suffocated, but vestiges of it lingered in the grayness of her eyes, clear as sunlit water and fierce with their intensity. She straightened, met Ganondorf's gaze, and blurted out, "There are Hylians in the stables who said they are waiting to be housed. Lord."

"They _have_ been housed, Nabooru. Exactly where you found them."

Koume laughed.

Nabooru's eyes narrowed. "There is a royal messenger among them. Lord. I trust you have taken his message?"

"I have."

"Nabooru, come." Kotake beckoned to the once-regent. "The message they brought is here. I would have you read it… if it pleases you…" She directed this last toward Ganondorf. He waved his permission; she stepped toward Koume and retrieved the letter. Nabooru mounted the steps cautiously, and accepted it from her.

It took her very little time to read it. Her eyes slid across the lines, and her expression grew tight. When she had finished, she looked at Ganondorf.

"Men who bear such an important proposal should not be treated thus. My lord."

Ganondorf lifted an eyebrow. "Do you trouble yourself _still_ about the Hylians in the stable? It is a decent enough chamber. I slept there, often, before I was king."

"But if you will pardon me, _lord_—after you were king, you were a _warlord_." Nabooru returned the letter to him with lofty disdain. "You know there is no shame in honest accommodations, even in rough quarters, even beneath the elements. These Hylians… they are soft and they…" She paused, and for a moment the intensity of her eyes wavered. "They are too apt to take offense."

"Such soft sensibilities, Nabooru?" Ganondorf's tone was musing.

Koume snorted. "She gave up her own rooms to house the first envoys, when she was regent."

Nabooru turned her stiff glance in Koume's direction. "There was no other place for them."

"There were rooms."

Nabooru's momentary silence was pointed. "None that fitted the honour of their station."

"And was their station above yours?" Koume shot back. "Envoys, to be exalted over regents?"

"Enough," said Kotake, suddenly. Nabooru had opened her mouth to retort; she snapped it shut. "I will not have you quibbling over niceties," Kotake continued. "What think you of the Hylian proposal?"

"What can she think, addle-brained wench, in love with Hylians girl?" Koume snapped.

"She was regent, Koume," Kotake retorted.

"I think they honour us with their proposal," Nabooru interrupted, shrugging.

"_Honour_?" Koume shrieked. The violence of her exclamation unbalanced her; she went staggering against the steps. Her handmaidens hastened to her side.

"Sister!" Kotake held out a hand. Her eyes were fixed on Nabooru, and she asked, voice gentle, "What do you mean by this, Nabooru?"

"I mean that Hylian royalty does not offer up its children for marriage lightly, my lady. They are taking the prospect of our friendship seriously." She looked sideways at Koume, who sat upon the dais, glowering at her. "And I think we should respect this generous gesture of theirs, rather than… prolong hostilities—however unspoken—by the ill-treatment of their envoys and retainers."

"These Hylians, they _fear_ us!" Koume bawled. "This fear—that is the truth of it. Not generosity. _Fear_." She bared her teeth, as she drew out the word. "And they think that if they say, come, here is a princess, wed her, bed her, get daughters on her, only sign this treaty and say we are friends—"

"What is wrong with alliances?" Nabooru burst out.

"With vermin? Ach!" Koume threw up her hands, and her screech echoed through the chamber. "They do all things from fear, and must we stoop to play their games, sign over our freedom for their peace of mind? They write their treaties and want us only to sign them, and they will throw in a girl to make the treaty go down; they will tie our hands with their quills and parchment and blasphemy before the goddesses!"

"Why must you think ill of them?" Nabooru shouted. "Why must all they say and do be _lies lies lies_ with you?"

"When has what a Gerudo says and does been anything but _lies lies lies_ to a Hylian? Answer me this!" Koume shrieked. "Girl who loves them, sighs for them, stupid girl, useless _chattel_; they will never love you for all you grovel for them!" Her words burst from her in a spray of saliva.

"Koume." Kotake had slipped to her sister's side, and now laid a hand upon her shoulder. "You excite yourself too much. Come away."

Koume struggled, briefly, against her sister, but was at last overcome by the handmaidens. "Ganondorf.. Nabooru." Kotake nodded to king and once-regent, and then left, trailed by a string of handmaidens and her sister. Koume had begun to wail.

In their wake, the silence lay heavy and suffocating.

"I mean to accept," said Ganondorf. He did not look at Nabooru, who stood trembling at his feet.

"You do not take Lady Koume's position then?"

"Does the position I take concern you?" His eyes flickered to hers; they were cold.

Nabooru's head jerked back, as if she had been slapped. "_Yes_," she spluttered, "_yes_. She is only a little girl. Fourteen. You must be…" She paused, and seemed to grope for words that were beyond her. "You must be… _good_ to her."

"Do you believe me incapable of goodness?" His voice was so soft that Nabooru could barely make out his words.

She stared at him, aghast and still desperate for meanings that would not unknot themselves for her. "I did not say that," she said at last.

His silence spoke for him. She tried again.

"It is just… _Ganondorf_. You cannot be… you cannot be cavalier toward them. Hylians. I have spent time among them, I have known them, I…"

"Men as fearful as Hylians cannot be insulted, Nabooru." He rose slowly. "What do you fear?"

She looked at him, and her expression was raw and desperate.

"The same Ganondorf who left me as his regent did not return to relieve me of his throne," she said.

He did not speak.

"_Ganondorf_." She spoke his name in a breath, like a prayer. "Be _kind_ to them. They will learn to be good—they will learn not to be afraid—if you are only patient with them. If only you do not—" She halted, bit her lip.

He descended the dais and came to stand before her, slow step by slow step, and lifted a thumb to stroke her jaw. He was close enough that the heady scent of him—warm coconut oil and cinnamon, and the softest breath of pomegranates—washed across her.

"Do not presume to call for Ganondorf Dragmire, regent," he said. "As far as I know, he cannot hear you any longer."

He left her alone in the meeting chamber. She sat, and watched the single window, until the midday had slanted away from it, and the desert began to turn to dusk.


	3. Courtship

**Author's Note: **Chapter has been revised as of July 19, 2012. I addressed my comma abuse and other minor grammatical problems. I also removed all references to a certain blond hero who really should not be floating around this early in the fic. Thanks for reading!

**oOo**

III

COURTSHIP

It was midmorning, and the sunshine was bright enough to blind. The king had finally returned from four days of hunting, and his daughter was hurrying to meet him.

The Princess Zelda darted down the western ramparts of Hyrule Castle, her petticoats and morning gown a froth of white cotton and blue silk around her legs. The air was wet and crisp, kissed by a gently whispering breeze; it was still early enough in the season to raise gooseflesh along the princess's arms. She raced the shadows of the clouds that glided along the walkway, clouds that wandered to the south and toward Faron, the province from which the king now arrived.

She had glimpsed his company from the window of her bedchamber, before the maids had come to open the curtains and even before her lady Impa had awoken. The gates were open, and in the distance, she had spotted a procession. They had not been flying the king's colours, but the princess was certain that the king had returned. He had been absent four days, after all. Four days was far too long for a king to be gone. The court had grown restless.

She had dressed, fast and clumsily, holding her breath and clenching her morning gown in her fists, lest the rustle of fabric waken her lady. But Impa had slept on, on a cot at the side of the princess's bed.

Zelda had not bothered trying to reach the courtyard by way of the castle. She did not want to be noticed, and so she took an outer route along the ramparts. There was a little door that lead, down a narrow staircase, to the courtyard. She had found it on her twelfth birthday, and used it often. She liked to see the king when he returned home from his hunting, though she had never once presumed to leave the shadow of the rampart, and make herself known to him. She only watched him from the doorway, until the servants had borne away the prizes of his excursions, and he himself had vanished inside the castle.

She had only ever tried to make herself known to him once, when she was very small. She had been standing with Impa, watching the king from the steps of the castle, and Impa had pointed to him and said, "There is your father."

He had looked splendid, among the banners of the new-returned company, and he was striding toward them, ringed by knight who did not look half as majestic as him. Impa had bowed her head and murmured, "My lord," as he passed by, and Zelda had reached out a hand, clutched at the Hylian motif stitched upon the hem of his tunic. He had not checked the relentless power of his stride, and jerked her after him, so hard that her heart thudded into her throat, and she let him go. She fell, and hit her mouth against the steps. Two teeth were knocked loose; her mouth began to fill with blood and when she screamed, blood dribbled down her chin and stained her dress.

The king had not looked once at her. But she had been very small, and the clutch of her hand on his tunic not very noticeable. Impa had scolded her, as much as she soothed, as she had washed the blood from the princess's mouth, and sponged her scraped arms and legs clean. "You must not ever bother the king, Zelda," she said. "He might send you away, if you are too much in the way. Let him be."

Zelda still liked to look at him, even from the distance. For even in his hunting dress—careless and windswept, rank with his exertions—he was still splendid in a way only kings of legend could be.

And he was, indeed, her king.

The battlements skimmed away to either side of the princess, and she darted for the curve around which her destination lay, skirting the west wing door that stood directly before her. The door opened abruptly. It brought her staggering to a halt, gasping with her run. Two men stepped onto the walkway, too close for her to pretend that she did not see them. She combed her hair from her mouth and slapped at her disordered skirts, drew a deep, fortifying breath in an attempt to calm her drumming heart. They caught sight of her and hailed her with their respects. They were courtiers, dressed in starched collars and doublets of crushed, mulberry-red velvet. They bowed to her, the younger one with a fluid grace and brilliant smile, his companion with some stiffness, as if her presence had caught him unawares.

"My lady." The younger straightened, and considered her with soft, bright eyes. "It is a fine morning for a stroll."

"Yes." She met his smile, for all that the interruption rankled. "Thank you."

"I trust her Ladyship has not been left to wander without the attendance of friends?"

"Never." Zelda glanced at the battlements. She thought of Impa, sleeping in the east wing.

"I hope her Ladyship does not have far to walk?"

"I am going to chapel." Her eyes flitted to the curve in the ramparts, and the little door leading down to the courtyard. Her stomach ached with the nearness of it.

"It would be our honour to escort her Ladyship there," said the young courtier, eagerly, "if she would permit us."

The proposal caught Zelda up short, and in her astonishment, she looked the courtier full in the face. He was smiling, and looking down at her with bright, earnest curiosity.

"My lady." This was the second courtier, with a reedy voice and a raw bite of impatience to his tone. His slippered toe tapped insistently. "We do not wish to impose ourselves upon you."

"But if my lady requests!" exclaimed the first courtier, looking aghast as his companion. He seemed scandalized by the thought of abandoning her to walk the ten feet between herself and the west wing door alone, and she realized that there would be no escaping him unless she accepted his offer. He was one of those young men whose youth afforded him too vast a sense of chivalry; it imposed itself upon everyone and everything, and it stood ready to crush him if she did not yield to its satisfaction.

She said, "I would be happy for your attendance, good sirs."

The young courtier looked transported by her assent. He bowed and said, "My _lady_," with a relish that discomfited Zelda as thoroughly as his anxiety had. She wished, now, that she had not left Impa sleeping. He fell into step beside her, and she laid her hand upon his proffered arm. His companion followed with rigid reluctance.

They passed through the west wing door, and down the corridor, along flagstones that gleamed with recent washing, among knots of bustling servants. They paused, as the princess passed, and bowed their heads. Zelda had never noticed so many servants at once, and felt that she intruded upon their work. She looked away from them, toward the windows, and her companion, noticing the movement of her head, guided her toward one.

"Has her Ladyship marked that our capital entertains visitors this day?" He gestured to the courtyard. Zelda's eyes widened.

The cavalcade of horsemen that she had noticed earlier were now streaming through the gates, on steeds she realized that she did not recognize. Their riders were dressed in vests and trousers that were narrow at the ankle and hip, wide at the leg, and their iron red hair spilled, to a man, down their half-bared shoulders, past their waists. The princess squinted, bewildered that men could wear their hair so long and in so violent a shade of red, and realized, with a start, that there were no men among the company: they were made up entirely of women. She caught her breath.

Gerudo horsewomen.

The vastness of her error struck her, then.

Impa had told her that a company of Gerudo were to arrive somewhere within a fortnight, and she had forgotten this in the morning light, as she peered at the distant procession and thought it the king returned. She remembered how Impa had worn upon her face a remote and troubled expression, and when Zelda had asked her, "Why do the Gerudo come?", Impa had replied, "I do not know," in a voice of slow hesitation.

Zelda took what Impa had chosen to tell her. She knew that her lady did not care to be a bearer of hearsay; if the castle gossip had attributed a reason to the company's visit—and Zelda, kept too close, by her own desire, to her private living quarters, with her books and her tutors and with Impa for her company, had not heard if they had—Impa would put no store by the theory until it had been proven.

The prospect of Gerudo had interested the princess, when she had first had the news. They rarely left their desert, and Zelda had only ever seen one Gerudo before: a woman no taller than Zelda's knees, with a face all tramped over by age and hair the colour of old blood. She had haunted the outer gates one winter, when Zelda was thirteen, with a basket on her arm and her deep, syrupy voice lifted in a plea for charity. The court had called her 'the Old Bublin', and the Old Bublin had come to stand for the Gerudo people in Zelda's mind, their flesh-and-blood representative where Zelda had once only envisioned paper cut-outs of burly women clutching spears, or sometimes giantesses with grass-green skin and flesh made lumpy by yawning, weeping scars.

"There are so few of them," said Zelda, now. Her voice was low, and her breath fogged a spot of glass. She found her error did not pain her as much as she had feared.

The courtier was silent, and she looked up at him. He was looking at her with a strange expression, caught between pity and an intrusive kind of curiosity. She did not like how he looked at her, and so she turned from the window, and from the rapacity of his glance.

"My lady." The older courtier spoke, his tone was urgent. "May we now escort you to chapel?"

"Yes." She shuddered, as the thirst to run burned suddenly in her belly, and began to seep down to her feet. "Thank you."

Her voice drew the young courtier from his scrutiny. He offered his arm again, and they continued.

There were a pair of double doors at the end of the hall, and it was here that the chapel stood. The young courtier opened a door and saw her through; she turned to thank him, but he slipped in after her, and she surrendered to his persistence.

She saw his eyes flicker to a place but somewhere above her, and she followed his gaze, found it fixed upon a painting of the goddesses. The sisters had been arranged in a half circle: Nayru presiding, Farore upon her right, Din upon her left. Below them stood the Triforce, a vision of gold against the peach-pale stone. Zelda gazed at the Triad, and felt her heart grow light. For a moment, she forgot her discomfort.

"Nayru preserve us all," the young courtier whispered.

He seated himself in a pew, as if to devotion, but his eyes had wandered down again, and were upon the princess. He had spoken in her direction. "Yes," Zelda said. She turned her back on him and stepping into the aisle, began to walk toward the altar.

The chapel was a lofty room, made close by the pews and the tapestries draped across the walls. Upon the altar was a block of stone with three carved tiers. Within the first three bowls, cut in the shape of jewels, had been hollowed. Upon the second was the carved image of an ocarina. Upon a third was a small likeness of a pedestal, that held no sword.

Impa had once told her the story of the altar: a hundred, hundred years ago, a temple had once stood, and within it there lay a silver sword men called Evil's Bane. The goddesses blessed the hero that they meant to wield the blade. The chamber in which it was kept could only be opened by three magical jewels and an Ocarina. But the temple fell into ruin, and the jewels, the Ocarina, and the sword had vanished. Now no man knew where the broken temple lay. If, of course, it had ever existed.

A hand closed upon the princess's shoulder.

"Zelda." Impa's voice checked the startled leap Zelda's heart had given. The princess turned, and found her lady standing behind her. "What are you doing?"

Zelda smiled, and felt loose with relief. "I had meant to watch the king ride in from the courtyard," she began. "I thought it was him, I saw a procession from my window—"

"That was the Gerudo."

"Yes! I realized—"

"Zelda, we must go. You're wanted in the king's study."

Zelda's eyes widened. "Has he returned?"

"No." Impa's eyes were grim, her mouth wound up tightly with some feeling that Zelda could not name. "You have been summoned by his council. Come. You've laced your dress up wrong. We must dress you to meet a king."

**oOo**

There were three Gerudo women standing outside of King Harkinian's study, whispering among themselves, dressed still in their riding habits. The Hylian soldiers flanking the door were watching them with such rude intensity that Impa had to snap at them to gain entrance into the room.

There were two more women seated in the antechamber; they had changed out of their riding vests and trousers. Zelda thought at first that one was the Old Bublin: her skin was the colour of liver and so withered that she seemed to be wearing a borrowed body. But this woman was more richly dressed than the Old Bublin: her robe was a smalt blue, the fabric of it heavy and hemmed in gold. She wore a torque about her neck, studded with a single crystal that rested above the hollow of her throat. She peered down the length of a great, hooked nose at Zelda. Her eyes were russet red, her face without expression.

"Thank you for coming so promptly," said the second woman. "My name is Nabooru. Regent of Gerudo Valley. And this is Dame Kotake, advisor to the king."

Lady Nabooru was younger, much younger, than the Dame, and she was beautiful in a hard, brilliant way: her lashes and eyelids were painted marigold, her lips ocher, and her hair was long and loose, red as wild cherries, brilliant against the caramel flush of her skin. She too was robed, in damson purple that made her hands look as slender as reeds. She rose, as she spoke, and nodded at Impa, but her eyes were riveted upon Zelda: gray eyes, clear as sunlit water. Zelda nodded to her, to keep from staring back.

"I apologize that we come alone, my lady," Impa said.

The woman flapped her wrist, impatient. "We descended upon you unexpectedly. My Lord Harkinian, perhaps, did not anticipate us for some days. But we were a small company. We traveled quickly. My Lord Dragmire was eager to come to this place."

"My Lord Dragmire is waiting within," broke in Dame Kotake, suddenly. The scrutiny of her expression had not changed.

"Of course." Impa bowed.

"My apologies; I keep you. Come." Nabooru stepped toward the door of the study and knocked upon it, hard.

The door flew open, and a man wearing the colours and crest of the Hylian council beckoned Zelda forward. Zelda faltered, and Impa urged her into the room.

"May I present to you, my lord, her Ladyship the Princess Zelda?" said the councilor, to the back of a tall man who stood before the study's single window. He reached out and clasped Zelda gently by the shoulders, guided her to stand before him. She felt his hands trembling.

The man turned, and Zelda's breath caught.

She had not noted him earlier, when the courtier had showed her the Gerudo cavalcade, and she wondered, for a wild, fleeting second, why she had not. He was too tall and broadly built to mistake for one of his escort. His hair and eyes were the colour of cranberries, his skin a rich mixture of auburn and olive. He was robed, like Nabooru and the Dame, but there was a stiffness to the fabric that did not sit easily upon the grace and nonchalant poise of his body; the Gerudo motifs upon the hems of his sleeves had the angular sharpness of fresh ironing. His expression looked faintly amused.

She found she could not speak for a moment, that she had forgotten the formal greeting. The councilor's hand grew tight upon her shoulder, and she said, "Hullo sir." She recalled the proper salutation in the next instant, and amended, "Hyrule welcomes you," as she dropped into a curtsey. She held it for somewhat longer than was correct, trying to gather her self-possession. When she straightened, she found Lord Ganondorf considering her, a soft smile upon his mouth.

"Thank you," he said. His tone deep and ceremonious. She was struck by the richness of it. His eyes were a deeper red than she'd realized, the colour of garnets, or perhaps of wine. She realized she was staring, and looked away.

"Had our king but known when to expect you…" the councilor began, faltering.

"But he did not." Ganondorf looked toward the speaker. "But that is no matter. I will wait here for him."

The councilor hesitated. "_Yes_," he said, voice faint. "But… would you not prefer…? Your rooms. Surely they are more_comfortable_—"

"I think I may more comfortably await Harkinian's pleasure in Harkinian's study," Ganondorf interrupted.

"Yes, but… My lord. We are not.. _sure_… exactly when…" The councilor trailed into silence, and looked away. "As you wish, my lord," he said at last.

Ganondorf returned his gaze to the window; the counselor's convulsive grip upon the princess's shoulder slackened, and he touched her arm, gently. "My lady," His voice was an undertone. "You do not have to stay."

She looked up at him, and for a moment, she was tempted to leave.

But a princess did not abandon guests. _Hyrule welcomes you_, she had told Lord Ganondorf. It was her duty to see that it did so—even in the absence of its king.

"I will stay, thank you," she said, quietly, and moved away from him.

She took a step toward Ganondorf. "I trust my lord had a pleasant journey?" she asked. Her voice was so frail that she feared he would not hear her. She opened her mouth, meaning to speak again, blushing to think that she could not even command her voice, when the lord turned to her.

"Your trust is well founded." His mouth curved in a slow smile. "It was."

**oOo**

King Harkinian returned just a little after midday.

A cry went up in the courtyard below, amid a spattering of fanfare, and tidings of the king's return reached the company gathered in Harkinian's study moments before the king himself swept through the antechamber door. His courtiers had not managed to press him into more suitable dress. He strode in still fresh from his ride: his spheral cape flung carelessly and ill-buttoned upon one shoulder, his brown tunic roughened.

"Lord _Dragmire_!" Harkinian's voice echoed to the rafters, and he clasped Ganondorf's hand with a noise like a thunderclap. "You will forgive me my absence. But I did not expect you so soon!"

"We rode fast," said Ganondorf.

"My lord." The councilor stepped forth. "It is a pleasure to see you again. If it please you, the princess has been amusing our guest." He ushered Zelda forward. She was bewildered by the noise of her father's entrance; she stood before him, trembling a little, overwhelmed by the size of him, the smell of his nearness: pine sap and meadow grass, mixed with the subtle savour of sweat and blood.

King Harkinian looked down at her, and his eyes were a little glazed and uncomprehending. "Yes," he said, "Yes, I imagine she is an amusing creature." He looked up again, toward the councilor. "I am sure she must have her rest before supper."

"Of course, my lord." The councilor bowed.

Zelda did not need his hand upon her elbow to obey the dismissal, but she suffered him to push her along anyway. She was nearly at the door when Lord Ganondorf said, "Princess."

"My lord?" She spun around.

"I would request the honour of escorting you to supper, when you have had your rest."

She curtsied, a sharp dip that was almost impolite in its haste, but she suddenly could not trust herself to remain upright. "My lord is very kind."

He acknowledged her words with a tilt of his head, and then returned his attention to the king.

She stumbled out to Impa. Her mind was swimming, and she could barely bring herself to wish the Lady Nabooru and Dame Kotake a good afternoon.

**oOo**

The evening came, and with it came a note from the king. It was only a line, a summons to the king's study following supper. Impa read it out loud, while a maid laced up the princess's gown.

"What do you think he wants?" Zelda asked, when Impa had laid the note aside.

Impa had been restless the entire afternoon, and the note put her in no better humour. She rose now from her chair and paced to Zelda's side. She took the brush from the maid's hands, and began to brush Zelda's hair with slow, distracted strokes.

"I could not say," she murmured.

"Have you learned… why Lord Ganondorf has come here?"

"I have not," she admitted. She glared, suddenly, at the maid, who pretended to busy herself with the princess's sleeves, but moved too slowly to complete her ruse. "Wait outside the door," she snapped. "I will put her Ladyship in order."

"Does he come for me?" Zelda asked, when the maid had gone.

Impa's hand faltered. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know." Zelda blinked at the vision of herself in the ribbed glass of the mirror: the lank, watered-down gold of her hair against Impa's hand, the small, straight body on which her clothes hung as if she had shriveled up since donning them. Her face was thin, her features pinched, her icy blue eyes far too widely spaced. She glanced away and said again, "I don't know."

They went down to supper, and found Lord Ganondorf awaiting Zelda before the cavernous mouth of the Great Hall.

He opened his hand to her, as she drew level with him. She hesitated in some confusion; the Hylian custom was a proffered arm, upon which the lady laid her hand. But after a moment she took his hand, and he closed his fingers. His skin was warm, the palm callused hard like shell.

They walked down the centre aisle, as slowly as if in ceremony, and it felt to the princess that the eyes of the entire kingdom were turned upon them. She clutched, desperately, at the remnants of her composure. She felt, for a blinding, sickening moment, like a foreign queen, exposed in all her alien barbarity. She was something else, walking with her hand cradled by a Gerudo king, less than a Hylian princess—less than a Hylian.

The terror of her thoughts made her catch her breath, made her mind go light and sick.

"You are shaking," said Ganondorf, very low.

"I apologize, my lord." She could not think of what else to say.

"What do you fear, princess?"

The shock of the question struck her like a blow. She forgot all decorum, swiveled her head around to look up at him. She said, "Fear? My lord? I—I do not understand you."

They had reached the high table. Ganondorf guided her toward a chair that a servant indicated and left her to seat herself. He did not answer her.

Her mind whirled, as she sank into her chair. She could not understand Ganondorf's question, or why he had asked it. What had she said to provoke it? What had she done?

Supper began when the king arrived, and seated himself between Zelda and the Gerudo king. The food was far more lavish than usual: a greater selection of meats were brought to the tables, and the wine flowed in profusion. The cooks seemed more piqued than usual, and more than one kitchen boy, serving as an instrument to his masters' ill humour, came flying out of the kitchen juggling some garnished head of a boar or a roasted swan, still in its feathers, with the foot of a cook planted firmly to his backside. Squires were rushing back and forth, bearing in their hands bowls of rosewater for the fingers of the gentry, and a slew of jugglers, bards, and fools stood along the walls, jostling each other, preparing their routines. During the intervals in which a course was cleared away in preparation for the next, the entertainment left their stations, and diverted the company.

The length of the dinner, and the variety of the amusements, wore gradually away at Zelda's uneasiness until she began to wonder if she had not imagined Ganondorf's question, and the way in which they had walked down the aisle, her hand in his, in strange, exotic custom. She was enchanted by the bantering of the jesters, the songs of the minstrels, and by the fifth course she found herself looking about her: at the knights and courtiers seated below the salt, at the councilmen and favoured nobles seated at the high table. The Dame Kotake and Lady Nabooru sat upon Lord Ganondorf's right; Zelda had only now noticed them, and supposed her thoughts had been too full, outside the Great Hall, for her to realize that they had followed her and the Gerudo King inside. The Dame seemed wary of the food; she ate only enough for the sake of civility. The Lady Nabooru ate with hard, snapping bites. But she kept looking at Zelda and treated her meal as if it were an unwelcome distraction. Zelda soon stopped looking in Nabooru's direction. She found the woman's unwavering stare discomfiting.

By the time that the main meal was finished, and a course of sweetmeats presented, Zelda began to grow anxious again. She had caught the king looking sideways at her and remembered the summons.

She excused herself, before the dessert had been cleared away, and retired with Impa through a private door behind the dais.

When they reached the king's study, Zelda seated herself by the window and Impa stood beside her. They waited. At length, the king materialized.

He waved an impatient hand at Impa. "Leave us," he said, as he crossed to his chair and threw himself down.

"My lord." Impa bowed, and with a last look at Zelda, left the room.

"Come here," the king said. Zelda curtsied and obeyed with all haste.

The king's chair was a singular piece within that room, throne-like and too large, with the king now sprawled upon it. Zelda did not remember that it had been so conspicuous earlier that day, not with Ganondorf before her and the room filled with sunlight.

"Now," the king began, after a long moment, "you are sixteen years of age and in the prime of your youth. It would be a pity to waste such gifts. I do not intend to."

His voice was flat, his face unrelentingly expressionless. Zelda's stomach began to hurt. She held her breath.

"It is time you were married," Harkinian said.

The pain was growing ever tighter. Zelda began to waver a little. "My lord—" she whispered.

"They say that marriage is the surest way to make an ally of a man." His tone was musing, and his eyes began to wander around the room. He spoke as if he had not heard her.

"My lord—!"

"You have come to listen, not to speak." Harkinian's eyes snapped back to her face. "It has all been arranged. You are to be married to Lord Ganondorf Dragmire. He has come to collect you."

She stepped back, unconscious that she even moved. The king darted forward, reaching out an arm that seemed impossibly long toward her. He grabbed her wrist. His grip was like iron, and she realized, belatedly, that she was still pulling away. The bones in her wrist seemed to expand and _pop_, and she gasped with pain.

"I do not care if you do this willingly or not." Harkinan's voice was very soft. "But you will not shame me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord."

She had breathed the words, had not even moved her lips. He shook her. "_Do you understand me_?" He had not heard her speak.

"I _do_, my lord."

He released her. Her hand fell, limp, to her side.

"Go," he said, and turned his face to the window.

She went, and closed the door softly behind her.

**oOo**

When she was younger—indeed, in the days before she turned twelve—the Princess Zelda had tried to unravel her father, who men said did not rule his kingdom, but rather squandered his days upon the hunt, chasing game with all the desperate rage of a man who himself is chased by inescapable phantoms. She had asked Impa, as her lady had pinned on the sleeves of Zelda's gown one morning, "Did my mother die giving birth to me?" It was gamble, this question; Zelda knew little of her mother, and she sometimes wondered if her father had loved her very much, and if Zelda had killed her, without meaning to, without knowing what she did. Much as it happened in stories.

"_No_," said Impa, but her hand had shaken so much that she pricked the princess with a pin.

Zelda put store by the whispers in court, even if Impa did not. She had once heard a pair of court women trading their tales, in the humid dusk of the courtyard. The king had returned from hunting, and Zelda had ventured onto the castle steps to watch him from behind a column. She had not then discovered the little door on the ramparts.

She had been near the women, unobserved, and one was speaking of the king, telling the story as she had heard it told: that the queen, quite strong and healthy, had killed herself upon realizing the child scarcely emerged from her womb was a girl and "good for nothing but the marrying off!" "She was _old_," the woman had said, scandalized. "She couldn't have anymore children. And even if she could?" She snorted. "I doubt he has a seed left in his loins, all that riding he does. He could barely get the princess on her, I'd heard, much less another child. She fell from the eastern tower, and broke herself to pieces just over there—" She pointed. The women had craned their necks. "No one could say why she had been up there to begin with, except that she'd meant to throw herself down."

"Is that true?" the princess had asked her lady, when the evening had become a black and impregnable night and Zelda was dressing for bed. "Is that true?" She would not put on her nightgown; she stood trembling in her underskirts until Impa answered her.

Impa would not lie.


	4. Negotiations

**Author's Note: **DarkPriestessOfHyrule (and all you other wonderful readers who have nudged me, over the years, with requests that I get this fic on the road): you are my heroes. This story is for you.

Also (anticlimactically), Zelda receives yet another upgrade in age: she is now 16!

… I'll stop now.

**oOo**

IV

NEGOTIATIONS

Zelda found Impa waiting for her in the antechamber to the king's study. Her lady stood, steel-straight, facing the study door, her arms knotted over her chest, her face hard with concentration. The moment Zelda emerged, Impa crossed over to her and peered into her face.

"Zelda…" Impa laid a hand on the princess's shoulder. "What has he said to make you so unhappy?"

Zelda shivered. Her body felt hollow, as if it had emptied itself of her heart, lungs, and viscera, as if her bones and sinew had turned to water and leaked out of her pores. But she had not considered her face, how it looked, what expression the hollowness had written into her eyes and mouth.

"My lord the King—" She stopped. Her mind felt empty, too, dried up. The back of her skull fizzed.

"What did he _say_?" Impa hissed. Her spittle flecked Zelda's cheek, and her strong fingers dug into the hollow above Zelda's collarbone.

"I am to be married," Zelda mumbled. Her mouth felt strange, wrapped around words that surely did not belong to her. But unfamiliar as they were, the words stole whatever strength Zelda possessed. Her knees buckled. She listed toward the floor, awkward in Impa's hands, and again she breathed, "I am to be _married_."

The words pounded through her. They tasted false and wrong on the back of her tongue. She felt her body sliding toward limbo, between the truth of her life as she knew it and the fiction of her father's announcement. Marriage. It was too big, too sudden a horror to be true. Surely it was not true. If she had dreamed of her father in his study, grasping her arm and commanding her to marry the Gerudo king, then she would be all right. When she woke up, her mind would be clear, and this nightmare would be over. She would have her heart, lungs, viscera, bones, and sinew back. Perhaps the Gerudo would be gone. Once she awoke, she would be safe.

Impa spat something unintelligible, voice trembling. Zelda sat on the floor and looked at Impa's face. The Sheikah's eyes had widened, the whites like little ghosts.

"So it's true." Impa's own voice was a breath. "It's _true_." She released Zelda's shoulder and straightened.

_True_. The word rocked Zelda backward like a slap. She closed her eyes, bent her knees, and cradled her forehead between them.

Impa began to pace, mumbling words Zelda could not catch. The fizzing in the back of the princess's brain drifted into her skull. Her head felt light, unattached.

"Oh _Zelda_." Impa bent down and pressed Zelda to her. "My _princess_."

Zelda shut her eyes and sank into Impa's arms.

**oOo**

She slept. Her father's face followed her down the twisted, thorny road of her dreams.

_She again stood before him in his study. He clutched her arm, looked her up and down. _

"_Your mother is dead," he said._

"_Yes."_

"_She jumped from an eastern tower."_

"_Yes."_

"_She jumped to get away from you."_

_Zelda's mouth moved uselessly for a moment. At last, "… Yes."_

_Her father let her go and pointed behind her. Zelda turned. A table had materialized. On top of it sat an open casket._

_Zelda peered in. A woman's soft body lay there, dressed in bridal white, hands folded over her chest. A veil covered her face._

"_Kiss your mother, now," said the king. "Tell her you are sorry."_

_Zelda dipped her face into the casket. She kissed the woman's hands. The skin was soft, warm, pliable. "I'm sorry, Mama." Zelda kissed the hands again. "I'm very, very sorry."_

"_Say it again," said the king._

_Zelda's throat was closing. She tried to speak. The words felt like lead balls. Her mouth moved without sound. She began to cry, deep sobs that she disgorged, that clenched her body up so that she could barely breathe, barely see. She climbed into the coffin, gathered up the folds of her mother's funeral dress. "Please come back," she said. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—"_

**oOo**

Zelda awoke. Her body trembled. Mucus ran into her mouth and her eyes leaked tears. She sat up and wiped her face in the sheets. For a second, she could not remember her dream or the night before; she did not know why she was crying.

She stopped at last. She let the sheets fall from her hands and stared at the sliver of sunlight brightening a space between the drapes around her bed. Her head pounded on one side.

She rose at length, stumbled out of bed, and drifted toward her mirror. The glass was mottled blue and she had to lean close to see the details of her face. Her skin was blotchy, her eyes sunken. Her lips drooped. She thought, with a little jolt, _there is nothing there_.

She saw no life in her tear-smudged face, no character—simply a face, haloed in hair so pale it looked white. There had never been anything redeeming in that face, not when her maids groomed her for chapel or feast days, and certainly not now.

_There is nothing there_, she thought, again, touching the glass, tracing the reflection of her limp mouth and swollen eyes. She then touched her own cheek, the line of her neck, the curve of her breasts. She felt the weight of her own body, but it was as if the hollowness of last night still remained. It was in her blood, this hollowness; it emptied the life out of her eyes. Her mind flickered to the memory of herself as a small girl, clutching at her father as he strode in from hunting. She thought of him knocking her aside, her mouth hitting the stones. The way two teeth were knocked out and her skin peeled back, to let the hollowness inside.

_You must not bother the king, Zelda_, Impa had said to her._ He might send you away_.

And now Zelda was going. To the desert, with a man she did not know, to live among savage women, to die with her mouth full of red sand and her clothes stinking of boar.

_You must not bother the king_.

And yet she had, simply because she was alive; she had made his wife, her mother, jump off a tower, and now he was sending her away, because he could not bear the sight of her.

_Murderer. Assassin. Matricide._

She shuddered and turned her face from the glass. Her thoughts slid out of her control, to her dream, to her father's stony face, to Lord Ganondorf holding her hand in the Great Hall, as if she were his queen already.

_He knew_, she thought, and her body clenched. _Just as Impa knew_.

She thought of her excursion to the chapel with the two courtiers, the younger one watching her before the goddesses' altar, whispering, "Nayru preserve us all." _They all knew_, she realized_. And I am the last to learn of my fate._

Her body felt light, empty. She covered her face and sank to her knees.

_They knew and I did not_. The shame of her own ignorance, that seemed, suddenly, so indicative of her entire existence, crushed her. Her eyes began to water. She bent forward and touched her forehead to the flagstones.

There was no reason for her to cry. She was selfish to cry. She was good for nothing but the marrying off.

_Selfish_, she thought, with a violent flash of hatred for the tears leaking down her face. _Do not cry. Do _not_ cry. Do NOT cry._

Her brain felt split in two, between disgust at her tears and horror at her disgust. Another voice, small, breathless, echoed through her head. _I don't want to get married. Goddesses help me, I do not want to get_ married.

_A girl good for nothing but the marrying off!_ the gossiping woman had said, eyes popping, mouth round with the scandal.

Zelda imagined her own face as she had seen it in the mirror: empty, lifeless. _That is what you are,_ the voice of her disgust snarled, in strong, grating voice. _And this is what you must do: become Lord Ganondorf's wife. _That_ is what you must be._

That lifeless face that lived for nothing, for no one.

Her father needed her to marry the Gerudo king. She could not refuse him.

_The Gerudo King will save me_. The thought raced, unbidden, through her_. He will marry me, and I will have a purpose, and I will be saved—_

_But I don't want to be—_

"Oh _Princess_—!"

_Crash!_

Zelda jumped. She looked up, gasped when the drafty air of the room struck her, and turned toward the door. A chambermaid stood there, hands open. The tray she had been carrying lay upended on the floor, and its contents—a wedge of fresh bread and a tumbler of wine—spilled over her shoes. Zelda and the maid stared at one another for what felt like an eternity. Then Impa swept in.

"Come." She snatched at the girl's shoulder and shook her. "This is the princess's chamber; clean your mess."

The girl's eyes widened. "I'm so _sorry_, my lady!" Her voice was a squeak. She fell to her knees, grabbed the hunk of bread, and began to sop up the wine with her skirt.

"Fetch the princess another meal," Impa said. "Quickly now, off with you and your clumsiness!"

The girl shot to her feet and fled, skirt dripping.

"Zelda." Impa crossed over to her charge and knelt beside her. "Why are you on the floor? Are you ill?"

"No." Zelda's voice was scratchy, disused.

Impa put her arms around Zelda's shoulders. "You've been crying." Her voice was fierce. "Oh, my princess—"

"No." Zelda straightened, pulled away. Impa, surprised, opened her arms. Zelda staggered to her feet.

"Zelda?"

"I've cried too much." Zelda cleared her throat. "Too long. I'm sorry. I've been selfish."

"_Selfish_?" Impa stood, quick and graceful—though danger sharpened the lines of her body, hardened her face. "You have been sold in marriage to a savage man—a king of _thieves_. Do not tell me of selfishness. Your father—"

"My lord the King," Zelda said, slowly, "is only doing what he must. Surely." Her voice sank so low on the last word that she mouthed it.

"What he must? What he must do is push for a treaty that does not include the sale of _you_, like some prize horse!" Impa's body tightened. She began to pace.

"I'm not being sold." Zelda's voice was breathy with exhaustion. "I am being _married_."

"Used, like _money_."

"But—" Zelda took a shaky breath. "I'm a girl. And that is what girls do. Get married."

Impa barked a laugh. "And what was I, when I was sixteen? A boy? A sword? A rock?"

Zelda blushed. "I am a princess."

"Zelda—"

"My father commands this marriage."

"Zel—"

"There is nothing I can _do_."

She shouted the last word. Her voice echoed through the chamber. Impa looked at her.

Zelda lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Silence. Zelda, afraid that she had upset her lady-in-waiting, shrunk back a step—but then Impa closed in and enveloped her in a hug. The Sheikah smelled sharp and musty, of sweat and soot and the sword oil she used on the daggers she no longer carried but still kept wrapped in linens, tucked beneath her bed.

"I am sorry." She pressed her lips to the top of Zelda's head. "You have the right of it. Forgive me. It is just—"

"What?" Zelda mumbled. "It is just what?"

The Sheikah was silent for a moment. "Not now, my princess," she said. "Not now."

**oOo**

Lady Nabooru found a page standing outside of the door of the Mandrag's chambers later that morning.

The page—no more than a boy, as slight as spring grass in his slashed sleeves, fustian tunic, and narrow collar—wrung his hands as if he were in prayer. Every now and then, one of his fists flickered out to tap the door. He flinched each time he made contact.

Nabooru eased the door of her own chamber shut. "Child," she called. "What business have you with the Mandrag?"

The boy spun around.

"Have you brought a message?" she asked, stepping toward him.

The boy gaped up at her. She paused, opened her hands, and loosened her stance. "I am the stewardess of Mandrag Dragmire," she said. "If you have a message for him, you may give it to me."

The boy croaked.

"I'm sorry?"

He looked at the floor. "His Majesty the King Harkinian has a message for the Gerudo lord," he said. Nabooru heard the emphasis on _king_, on _Gerudo lord_.

"I see." She took another step and held out a hand. "I will take it to him."

He looked at her hand, at the skin that had cracked like baked clay, at the ragged stumps of her fingernails. "It is not a written message."

Nabooru lowered her hand. "Will you then recite it to me, then?"

"I am to give the message directly to the Gerudo lord."

Nabooru shrugged. "Well then. Come with me."

She led the boy into the antechamber of Ganondorf Dragmire's rooms, told him, "Wait," and let herself into the king's inner chamber.

The room was white with sunlight. The light caught the curves of the eagle-headed doorknobs, swam in the legs of two divans. It spilled through the double doors at the end of the room. The doors opened onto a balcony of white stone.

Lord Ganondorf leaned against the balustrade, robed in peach-pale satin. The sun was like water among folds of his robe. His hair was a heavy, rust-red braid along his neck. The sight of that braid was almost visceral; for one sharp moment, she felt the coarse texture of it, a memory tangled in her fingers, the scent of it—coconut oil, a trace of pomegranates—in her throat.

Nabooru coughed. "Ganondorf," she called. "There is a messenger to see you."

Ganondorf lifted his head and turned partway. His profile was hawk-nosed, thin-lipped. "Well?" he said. "Where is he?"

"In the antechamber."

Ganondorf raised an eyebrow. "Am I to be brought to him like a supplicant, Nabooru?"

"No," she said, though that had been exactly what she had meant to do. "No—I mean, would you like me to show him in here?"

"Yes." He swung around to face her. His robe was open to the waist and carelessly belted with a sash of oil silk. She could see his body down to the shadow of his groin. A touch of jade shaded his olive skin. Her breath caught. She looked away.

"I will ask him to give you a moment. If you wish to—" She gestured at his robe. "Dress, before you see him."

"Your Hylians," Ganondorf said, "and their sensibilities." He turned back to the balustrade.

Nabooru returned to the antechamber. The boy was fiddling with his collar. He faltered when he saw her.

"The king will see you in a moment," she said.

She waited three minutes, counting out of the seconds under her breath, hoping that Ganondorf made good use of his time. But nothing had changed when she finally gestured the messenger into the inner chamber. The king still leaned against the balustrade in his robe, the sinews of his exposed calves taut.

"My lord?" said Nabooru.

Ganondorf raised a hand. "Speak."

The boy began, "H-his Majesty, the ki… King Harkinian invites you and—" He glanced at Nabooru, "two of your escort to join him for breakfast. It is to be held at twelve o'clock in the king's solar."

He paused. Ganondorf said, "And?"

"And His Majesty hopes that you and your escort will find ample opportunity for respite and amusement within these walls. He says that your people may walk freely through the castle and the market town over the next fortnight, while all arrangements, regarding your visit, are under discussion. A public announcement is planned at the end of the second week, after which His Majesty hopes that you will join his court in their summer lodge for further celebrations."

There was another silence, longer this time. "And?" Ganondorf said.

"That is all. Sir."

"I see." Ganondorf straightened. "Go."

"His Majesty the King Harkinian wishes to know if you find his proposal of a twelve o'clock breakfast agreeable. Sir."

"Tell him it is indeed agreeable. Now _go_."

The boy bowed, stiffly, and left.

"Twelve o'clock," said Ganondorf, after a long while. "That is very late."

"No so late," Nabooru said, "for Hylian nobility."

Ganondorf turned. "You have suffered their company long enough that I suspect you sympathize with their chosen hours." He smiled. His eyes were cool. "Late as those hours may be."

Nabooru's lips tightened. "Their traditions are simply not ours, Ganondorf."

Ganondorf started from the balustrade and strode past her. "It is their tradition to prolong matters unnecessarily?" He swung himself down onto one of the divans. "Late hours, fortnights. Do they mean to make prisoners of us?"

"It is simply the Hylian way, my lord. What reason is there to be hasty?"

"What reason is there to spend more than two weeks in the heart of Harkinian's capital? No. I do not accept his proposition."

"To breakfast?"

"To the fortnight. I do not mean to stay in Lanayru for so long. We came with a single purpose. There is no need to dawdle. We will conclude our arrangements before tonight and Harkinian may have his public announcement and summer lodge within the next two days. But we leave this place on the third day."

"_Ganondorf_." Nabooru stepped forward and gripped the arm of his divan. "We cannot just _go_. Harkinian expects us to stay a fortnight. Excessive, yes, but we must at least stay a week. If we left after three days, he would think us ill-mannered."

Ganondorf lifted an eyebrow. "You fear to seem ill-mannered?"

Nabooru grit her teeth. "Courtesy is important to Hylians. We must respect them."

"And I am marrying their princess." Ganondorf rose. "Should they not, then, by the same token, respect us?" Nabooru was silent. "I will not fawn over the pointed toes of Harkinian's slippers any longer than I must," Ganondorf continued. "We leave on the third day."

Nabooru bit her lip. "Let them at least take their time with negotiations. And perhaps fete us two days. We are among Hylians, Ganondorf, we cannot—"

"Three days," Ganondorf said. He turned and started toward the open door of his bedchamber.

"_Ganondorf_."

The king did not pause or even glance at her to acknowledge that she had spoken. She sprang after him and grabbed a fistful of his robe. "Ganondorf, just because you are king does not mean you have the right—"

He turned, pushed her arm aside. "Do not presume to command me, Nabooru." His voice was soft.

"I do not presume to _command_." Nabooru stepped back. "Ganondorf, you do not _know_ Hylians as I do. I housed their diplomats, while you campaigned in the desert; I lived and ate with them, I breathed the same air. For a year and a day, _I _fought to keep the peace between them and Koume and the other women who did not like them—_Ganondorf_, I _know _them. They will be offended if you give them no more than three days to conduct this business. This is their _princess_. Her engagement must be marked by _some_ ceremony."

"A whole fortnight of ceremony?" Disdain tinged Ganondorf's words.

"She is their princess."

King and stewardess stared at one another, wordless. Ganondorf's expression darkened.

"These Hylians," he began. "You care for them as if they were your own flesh and blood."

Nabooru stiffened. "Do not say that to me," she said. "I love my people. And it is _because_ I love them that I—"

"It is as though the goddesses appointed you champion of Hylians," he cut in, as if he had not heard her. He touched the underside of her chin and drew a finger down the side of her throat. "You are a different creature from the woman who guarded my throne, when I was on campaign."

_Girl who loves the Hylians, sighs for them, stupid girl, useless __chattel_. Koume's words drifted through Nabooru's mind. Had she changed so much? she thought. Capitulated so far to Hylian sensibilities, compromised so often in the months that Ganondorf had been absent, that her king no longer recognized her?

Ganondorf flattened his palm along her collarbone. She shuddered. "I have not changed," she said. "I am only doing what needs to be—"

The king leaned close. Nabooru felt the shape of his next words as he breathed them against her cheek. "Have you forgotten the raids?" he whispered. "Hylian knights wearing bandit masks, emboldened by their disguises, cutting down our mothers, our grandmothers, grinding our daughters to bloody pulp beneath their horses' steel shoes?"

She squeezed her eyes shut. "Stop."

"Do you?"

"This isn't _fair_."

"_Do_ you?"

"We did the same to them." Her eyelids trembled. "We were aggressors as much as they were. It has always been so. _Always."_

He pulled back. She opened her eyes. He stared down at her, his face expressionless.

"But they have always won," he said. "They have always lived here, in this province. Where there is water and good soil and cool wind. They have always won, since Din shaped the first Hylian and Farore breathed life into him and Nayru bound the soul of his tribe to this cool, green land. They have always won."

"_Ganondorf_," Nabooru breathed, "this is _not fair_."

"No," he said. "It is not."

"You cannot hate them for living here. The goddesses did not favor them with this land; they took it and cultivated it, just as we took the desert and cul—"

"You call the desert _cultivated_?" Ganondorf's hand closed suddenly at her throat—not hard enough to squeeze it, but enough that when she swallowed, she felt the slightest resistance. "Tell me, Nabooru—have you tamed the hot winds that flay the skin from our bones? Breathed life into the husks of our grandmothers, who lost themselves in sandstorms and died with their mouths full of the desert? Have you found a well that will never run dry, a patch of ground that will yield forth plants? Have you, Nabooru? Have you?"

She tore free of him and staggered backward. She collided with a divan and collapsed onto the pillows. "You think we live in _hell_," she spat. "After all our mothers—your mother—_you _—have done for our people, you think we live in _hell_." She stumbled to her feet. "Offend the Hylians as much as you _dare_, it won't change the desert, it won't make it green or make rivers burst out of the sand. But you'll make enemies of people who might be our friends, and then you'll see hell. They aren't _helpless_."

"Then why do their knights raid us behind the safety of bandit masks?"

"That was a long—"

"Why does their king cower and snivel and throw a shrinking, shamefaced wench into my bed?"

"You took her fast enough!"

The door of the outer room creaked open. Nabooru snapped around. Kotake stood there, dressed in red and gold robes, eyebrow raised.

"Come," she said. "We may be among Hylians, but that is no reason to act like them. I could hear you both down the hall. I thought you had been replaced by Hylian fishwives."

**oOo**

"Lord Dragmire!" exclaimed King Harkinian, "I trust I find you rested?"

There were four men already present in the king's solar when Ganondorf, Nabooru, and Kotake arrived: Harkinian himself and three older courtiers, with faces so wrinkled that their skin seemed made of running wax gone cold. Harkinian lounged at the end of the table, clasping a half-eaten peach. Juice stained his beard, his lips, the collar of his open-necked shirt. He laid the peach on his plate and wiped his fingers on his breeches.

"Sit, sit." He gestured, without waiting for the Gerudos to answer, toward the seat at the other end of the table. "The fruit is served; we simply await the meat and bread and Cucco eggs. How do you like my little domain, so far, my friends?"

"Well enough," said Ganondorf, as he seated himself. His robes were smalt blue, hemmed in black braid. Nabooru sat beside Kotake, as far away from her king as was polite.

"Well enough?" Harkinian snorted. "Give me half a day and you will be as bewitched as any boy sucking a maid's tit for the first time. Mark me, Dragmire!"

The king's companions looked stricken. Nabooru twisted her fingers beneath the table until they ached. She felt the sudden urge to laugh.

Ganondof offered the king a humorless smile. "I accept your challenge."

"Challenge?" Harkinian laughed. "Oh ho, I'll give you a challenge. We shall go hunting, tomorrow! Keep up with me and you will know a challenge." His eyes glittered.

"I have not doubt." Ganondorf plucked a cluster of grapes from a bowl close at hand. "I have heard tale of the Hylian hunt. My people do not hunt, by comparison. We but chase and snare in solitude; we but play games of stealth and trickery." He tilted his head and smiled sidelong down the table. "But a host of men and beasts, flying in mad pursuit of the lordly stag? That is an honest hunt, my friend."

"Without a doubt!" Harkinian slammed a powerful hand on the arm of his chair. "Mark this, Ganondorf: an honest day's hunt will indeed make you honest. Of course you cannot call what you desertmen do _hunting_. A pack of women skulking through the sand, chasing birds and groundhogs through an oasis? I would have you revoke the name 'hunting' from such child's play, Dragmire—it shames the valour our honest pursuit." He paused, smirked. "Which honest pursuit," he added, "you shall finally witness."

One of the king's courtiers looked shamed enough to swoon. A second was glancing toward the ceiling, as if beseeching heavenly intervention.

But before Harkinian could continue, two serving boys appeared, bearing platters of stewed meat and loaves of wheat bread, boiled Cucco eggs, and goblets of wine.

"Try the meat, Dragmire," Harkinian called, over the clink of dishes. "It's bear. I shot it myself."

The bear, Nabooru thought, was quite good, if heavily spiced. A mix of pepper and cumin scalded her throat. Her eyes watered. She slurped her wine, then choked when she realized that it too was laced with spices. She watched Kotake, mouth curled downward, pick at her eggs, which were coated in black cardamom. _Hylians_, Nabooru thought, regretfully, _and their spices_.

"You will forgive me, Harkinian," Ganondorf said, as the boys retreated. "But I must protest—not of what my people call hunting; no, on this point your wisdom shall be my own. But you must give me the credit of being an honest man. Surely, if I were not, you could not entrust your lovely daughter to me?"

The king paused, mid-chew, raised an eyebrow, and swallowed.

"My daughter? I do not fear to place her in your hands, Dragmire. _You_ are quite welcome to her."

"Speaking of her," Kotake began, abandoning her over-seasoned meal with a flourish. She turned steel-blue eyes on King Harkinian and smiled thinly. "Why does she not join us?"

Harkinian gave a one-shouldered shrug and continued to eat. "The Princess will join us for dinner," one of the courtiers said. "She sits with her nursemaid in the morning, I believe."

"Her nursemaid?" Kotake's eyebrows lifted. "But she is a woman grown."

"The nursemaid is Sheikah," the man said. "The people of that tribe are loath to be separated from their charges, and the princess and her lady have established a routine, I am sure."

Kotake's nostrils flared. "I thought the Sheikah had perished." She fixed hard eyes on Harkinian, as if she awaited an answer from him.

"To the best of our knowledge," said the courtier, "the Lady Impa is the last of her kind."

"A pity." Kotake took a bite of bread.

"I would ask," said Ganondorf, "that this lady Impa did not accompany us when my wife and I return to the desert. There will be more than enough servants in Gerudo Fortress to see that the princess is comfortable."

Eyes shifted to him. The way he said, "my wife," made shivers run down Nabooru's spine. Harkinian just shrugged.

"Done and done," he said, around a mouthful of egg. "The Sheikah's getting old, anyway."

"I also ask," Ganondorf said, "that we reconsider the fortnight that you have planned for our discussions."

This grabbed Harkinian's attention. The Hylian King set his wine aside. "How so? Is a fortnight not long enough?"

Ganondorf wiped his fingers clean and folded his hands before him. "Negotiations need not last half so long as a fortnight," he said. His voice was soft, but it was edged in steel.

"Indeed?" Harkinian tilted his head and rested his own hands on the arm of his chair.

"Three days will suffice," Ganondorf said. "Let us draw up a treaty between this day and the next. Nabooru informs me that it is Hylian custom to celebrate an engagement with feasting; by all means, let us pass the third day in feasting. But my escort and I will leave at daybreak upon the forth day."

"What about the princess?" broke in one of the older Hylians.

"The princess will travel with us."

"Where does the wedding fit into this?"

"The princess and I," said Ganondorf, "shall be wed in Gerudo Desert."

The table went silent.

"I thought," said Harkinian, "it was understood that you would marry my daughter here, in Lanayru."

"I will marry her," said Ganondorf, "in Gerudo Desert."

"But that is not done!" one of the courtiers cried. "She must be married in the Temple of Time, before the goddesses."

"She will be married before the goddesses." Ganondorf lifted an eyebrow. "In the Spirit Temple, in Desert Colossus. Do you object?"

"But did you not come all this way to marry her?"

"I came all this way to negotiate the treaty and fetch my wife."

"This is not done!" said the Hylian nobleman again, looking to his fellow courtiers and his king.

"Ganondorf," Nabooru began. "Would it not make more sense—?"

"Hush." Kotake touched Nabooru's hand.

"Why?" Nabooru lowered her voice. "What is he doing? Why must he marry the princess in Gerudo Desert?"

Ganondorf's eyes slid to her. She flinched. His gaze was steady, touched with amusement. He looked away, before she could mouth her question: _why?_

"This simply isn't _done_," another of the courtiers complained. "No Hylian royalty has been wed outside the Temple of Time. The irregularity…" He trailed off, looking helpless.

"No Gerudo royalty has been wed outside the Spirit Temple," Ganondorf said.

"But the princess is _Hylian_," said the courtier. His lip twitched, involuntarily, toward a sneer. "She must be married among her people, before a Hylian sage."

"Must I not be married among my own people? Send us a Hylian sage, if you must."

"But—"

"Enough." Harkinian raised a hand. He had not bothered to look, even once, at his courtiers. His eyes were fixed on Ganondorf.

"Yes?" Ganondorf's voice was soft.

"If you wish to marry my daughter in your desert and temple, do so. I will not object."

"My lord—" began a courtier.

"I said _enough_." Harkinian flashed a hard glance in the man's direction. "You can have a sage too; I'm sure we can dig up one who won't mind the journey. As for the three days. Give us seven and you shall have your treaty, your celebration, and a proper Hylian hunt."

Ganondorf considered. "Five," he said.

Harkinian's lip curled. "If you insist."

Ganondorf's eyes gleamed. "I do."

A few minutes later, the serving boys carried the emptied platters away and breakfast was concluded.

The three Gerudos walked back to their chambers. Kotake excused herself and vanished into her rooms, muttering of sending a girl to fetch her edible food. Nabooru followed Ganondorf to his chamber. He opened his door but did not step inside.

"Yes?" he said.

"Why is it so important to you to marry the princess in the Spirit Temple?" Nabooru's brow furrowed. "Isn't it all the same—the Spirit Temple, the Temple of Time?"

"No." Ganondorf looked past her into the middle distance. "It is not."

There was something in his voice that Nabooru could not name and did not like—a hitch, as if some thought gripped the Mandrag's brain. "Ganondorf," she said, slowly. "What is back in Gerudo Valley? In the Spirit Temple?"

Ganondorf's eyes met hers. He smiled.

"The goddesses," he said. Then he slipped into his chambers and shut the door.

**oOo**

**Author's Note: **If you notice anything that needs to be edited like RIGHT NOW (spelling, grammar, and punctuation especially), let me know. I won't be able to look at this chapter straight for at least a few days.

Next chapter arrives next Friday.


	5. Betrothal

**oOo**

V

BETROTHAL

Four days before the Princess Zelda departed for Gerudo Desert, the banns of her marriage to Lord Ganondorf Dragmire were read.

The banns—a series of announcements concerning the impending marriage, that were read by Hylian messengers in every corner of the kingdom—were traditionally read after the betrothal ceremony. But between the Mandrag's demands and Harkinian's indifference, Hylian tradition had gone by the wayside.

The speed with which the Royal Council arranged things—the reading of the banns over three days, rather than over the course of a fortnight; the betrothal ceremony, which would prove a shabby, shameful affair unless the Romani milkwine, imported all the way from Termina, arrived in time; and the Princess Zelda's hasty departure, which inspired scandalous talk among the gutter-minded—was unprecedented. By the evening of the second day, half of Hyrule knew that Zelda was to be married. The other half would know by tomorrow morning and would send gifts and congratulations accordingly.

"You are to leave for Gerudo Desert following the betrothal ceremony, Zelda," Impa said, when Zelda awoke on the morning of the third day.

Zelda sat up and rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes. "Has there been a messenger?"

Impa snorted. "No. But both castle and town hum with the news. It was not difficult to discover."

Zelda slipped from bed and eyed the ironbound chests spread throughout the room, piled with clothes carefully folded in linen. "Well—it is a good thing we did not wait to begin our preparations."

"Only fools wait," Impa muttered.

Zelda dressed and breakfasted with Impa in her solar. The chamber, furnished with two windows that looked into the courtyard, had originally doubled as a library. The library now slowly vanished into chests, to make room for the gifts that had been arriving from every corner of the kingdom since the reading of the banns: embroidered cloth, embossed plate, candlesticks and books bound in vellum, little chests packed with unguents, stoppered flasks of perfume oil.

"It is a wonder that these gifts arrived so quickly," Zelda remarked.

"They are merchants' gifts," Impa said. "To entice the favor of their liege lord."

Zelda smiled ruefully. "You need not sound so bitter. At least these things are nice to look at."

Impa harrumphed.

"My lady?"

Princess and Sheikah looked up. A chambermaid stood in the doorway of the solar. She curtsied.

"There's one of them Gerudos at the door, my lady," she said.

Zelda's stomach fluttered. Her mind moved, unconsciously, to Lord Dragmire; she imagined him standing in her chamber, gazing down at her from his immense height, imagined that he might hold out his hand, as he had in the great hall, and she would follow him into the corridor—where? Had he come for her already? She had not seen him up close since the feast in the great hall; she had not gone to dinner the previous two nights, but had spent them with Impa. What could she say to him? What would he want to hear? Her mouth burned, chalky and bitter with the aftertaste of the watered wine she has drunk with her meal.

She rose, but Impa was quicker. The Sheikah strode past the maid. Zelda trailed her.

When she entered the room, she found several Gerudo women. She recognized Lord Dragmire's regent, Nabooru, dressed in soft, lilac trousers, a dark, broad-collared blouse, and slender calfskin boots that reached her knees. She held herself like knights upon parade did—stiffly, ill at ease.

The women who accompanied her were also tense. Two were as slender as children. The third was nearly as tall as Nabooru, with shoulders so broad and a waist so undefined she looked a little like a man. All three were dressed in white, the fabric of their robes wrapped, draped, and delicate. Their hair was pulled back, severely. The biggest had braided ribbons into her chignon and painted her eyelids gold.

"Princess." Nabooru caught sight of Zelda standing in the doorway and snapped out a bow. "Good morning."

"Lady Nabooru."

"I came—" The Gerudo gestured at her companions. "I came to offer you my maids. That they might help you pack. Some of your garments—" The Gerudo's eyes flickered the length of Zelda's morning gown, with its dragging skirt, then slid away, "may not be appropriate for the desert. Your ladyship. These ones—my maids can be of service."

"Impa has been so good as to oversee my preparations," Zelda said, with a glance at the Sheikah. Nabooru looked at Impa too.

"It would please me to know what I could be of some service," she said, opening her hands.

Impa eyed the three maids. "Will they work well and follow direction?"

"Yes."

Impa nodded. "Then they are welcome."

Nabooru's shoulders relaxed. She nodded to the women. They filed past Zelda, their heads held so high that their necks strained visibly.

"Princess." Nabooru's words were like crossbow bolts, punched out, as if speech were awkward and foreign. "May I speak with you?"

Zelda tilted her head. "About what?"

Nabooru jerked a hand toward the door. "Can we speak outside?" She paused, as if considering something, then added, "If we might walk—in the gardens, perhaps…"

"Anything you must say to the princess may be said before me," Impa said.

Nabooru's face fell. "I—"

But then she paused. She blinked at the Sheikah, as if truly noticing her.

"Perhaps it would be best. Yes." She inhaled, exhaled sharply. "Yes."

Impa summoned chambermaids to tend to the packing; Zelda fetched a coif and hood to shade her face from the sun. The women then left the castle.

The Royal Gardens were a glorious affair in the summer: brick paths that snaked among lilacs and blue hydrangea, past fountains of bleached stone, up steps half-hidden by tangles of dog rose and baby's breath. The privacy offered by the hedges had always made the gardens feel close and hidden, and Zelda loved to roam its trails, avoiding the guards in their gilded armor, hiding away with books, watching for peacocks and rare insects, breathing in the mingled scents of lemon mint and chamomile. She preferred the gardens in the cool, wet dawn.

But today, so near midday, the sun baked the paths. The heat was wet and heavy. After a half-turn through the gardens, the women retreated to a bench beneath a hawthorn. "You must forgive me if I do not tolerate the heat as well as you," Zelda said, as she seated herself. The heat and sweat made her hands feel swollen. Impa and Nabooru remained standing.

Nabooru shook her head. "There's nothing to forgive."

"Will you sit?" Zelda asked, removing her hood. Her hair lay slick against her forehead. She undid her coif and patted her face dry.

"No thank you," Nabooru said.

"What did you wish to speak to us about?" Impa asked. She folded her arms, but her expression was calm and curious.

"The Mandrag does not wish you to accompany us, Sheikah, when we return to the Desert," Nabooru said.

Zelda went still, her face hidden in the soft linen of her cap.

"I'm sorry," said Nabooru. "That is all I wanted to tell you."

Zelda lowered the cap and looked at Impa. The Sheikah's arms were still crossed, but her face had frozen. Zelda turned back to Nabooru. "Did my father agree to this request?" Her voice was faint. She had thought she was done with surprises.

Nabooru's face tightened with discomfort. "He did."

Zelda folded her hands. "Did the Mandrag—" She paused, cleared her throat, and lifted her voice forcibly. "Did the Mandrag say why he does not wish my lady to travel with us?"

"He did not."

Impa dropped her arms. "I must speak with the king."

Nabooru looked alarmed. "Which one?"

"Impa, wait—" Zelda began.

"Sheikah." Nabooru held out her hands. "I know this is upsetting, but perhaps it is only temporary. I have spoken with the Mandrag on your behalf, and I mean to do so again. I know you love your lady well. But if the Mandrag does not bend in his resolution, I have an alternative."

Impa fixed her clear, grey glance on Nabooru's face.

"The girls I brought to you—they are good girls, all of them. Especially Diyena, the big one. They will be good to the princess—they, and I, will care for her while we are on the road. You needn't worry for her safety, my lady."

"But—" Zelda turned bewildered eyes on the Gerudo.

Impa's expression did not shift. "I _will_ speak with the king."

"Sheikah." Nabooru's voice was urgent. "Do not be rash."

Impa's eyes narrowed to slits. "I will not be _quiet_, Gerudo."

"Of course not. Only, if you speak with the Mandrag, allow me to mediate. He may change his mind but we must go slowly—"

Sounds from the courtyard—of horses, the shouts of men, the barking of dogs—drifted through the still air. Zelda listened, then turned to gaze over her shoulder into the shrubbery. The tree blocked her view of the courtyard, but she could imagine the scene: the king's colors hanging limp on raised poles, the greyhounds, quick-moving and restless, her father, mounting his horse.

"The king hunts today, does he not, with Lord Dragmire?" Her question cut across the steady march of Nabooru's reassurances.

"He does, Princess."

Zelda rose. "Then I will speak to him," she said. "To him and the Mandrag both."

"Princess, perhaps—"

Zelda reached out and touched Nabooru's hand. The gesture was so unexpected that the Gerudo fell silent.

"Stay or join me as you will." Zelda said. "But I will speak."

_I will not be quiet_, Impa had said.

**oOo**

Every path that twisted through the Royal Gardens led, eventually, to the courtyard.

Zelda reached the courtyard and slipped among the dogs and horses, the bantering courtiers and peasants carrying staves, which they would use to beat the brush and chase whatever prey lurked there into the king's spear. She caught sight of her father near the castle doors. Lord Dragmire sat astride a massive, ink-black steed, motionless amid the river of courtiers, squires, and servants surging around him.

It had been Zelda's intention to speak with her father. But as she stared across the yard, she realized how futile such an action would prove. Her father had not demanded that Impa remain behind. Lord Dragmire had.

She straightened her spine and walked toward him. He caught sight of her when she was less than six yard away. He turned his head to watch her approach.

She stopped when they were three yards apart and swept a curtsy. "My Lord Dragmire." Her voice shook.

"Princess." He inclined his head. A smile lurked in his wine-red eyes.

"I must speak with you." She straightened and lifted her chin, met his gaze directly. "About my lady-in-waiting. The Lady Impa."

She waited for him to speak. He remained silent.

"I wish her to accompany me to Gerudo Desert." Zelda pushed out the words in rush. "I know that you have forbidden her, but she is my lady and I would have her company."

She waited, for a second time, for him to speak. He regarded her wordlessly. He looked seven feet tall upon that horse, a colossus risen from the desert sand. She had read of the Gerudo colossi in an architectural history: titans carved from limestone and alabaster, presiding over the Spirit Temple like gods, precious jewels set between their eyes, snakes in their mouths. The accompanying illustrations had been both wonderful and grotesque, unlike anything Zelda had ever encountered among Hylians. She had always wondered, idly, what it would be like to stand in the shadow of the Gerudo colossi, dwarfed by their majesty.

"You will be my queen," Lord Dragmire said, at last. "A queen does not need a nursemaid."

"She is not my nursemaid. She is my lady-in-waiting."

He leaned forward in his saddle. "And there will be a hundred ladies-in-waiting and more to serve you in the desert."

"But she—" Zelda's voice was paper dry. "She is my _friend_."

"Dragmire!" King Harkinian's voice boomed from behind the Mandrag. Lord Dragmire lifted his head. Zelda's father nudged his horse alongside the Gerudo's; a boy trailed beside him, carrying the king's spear.

"Are you prepared to ride, Dragmire?"

The Mandrag glanced at Zelda. "Quite."

Harkinian caught sight of his daughter; the bravado of his expression shrank to irritation. "Well," he said. "And do you mean to take her along?"

Zelda's heart contracted. Lord Dragmire barked a laugh. "I do not," he said. "We were merely conversing, the princess and I."

His voice dropped, as he said _the princess and I_. A slow shudder passed down her back, through her belly.

"You shall have the rest of your natural lives to converse, I am sure," said Harkinian. "Come—the hunt awaits."

He urged his horse forward. A horn blasted in his wake. Zelda jumped. Courtiers swung up into their saddles, turned their mounts to follow their king. Dust clouded the yard. Zelda sneezed.

A hot breath rippled across the top of her head. She gasped. Lord Dragmire's horse loomed over her, so close she felt the heat of its powerful body. She looked up into Lord Dragmire's eyes.

"You will learn to live without your Sheikah," he said.

"But I do not _want_ to!" she blurted out.

"The Sheikah had no love for the Gerudo, when they walked this earth," the Mandrag said. "And I have heard that they thirst for vengeance in death."

She stared at him. He leaned down, slid his hand up the curve of her throat, and cupped her chin. His hand left a trail of fire on her skin. Her mind blazed.

"Until the betrothal," he said. He straightened, whipped his horse around, and was gone.

**oOo**

His touch haunted her, ate at her, until she was no longer quite sure that he had touched her at all.

**oOo**

At last, the day of the betrothal ceremony arrived.

King Harkinian and his Gerudo guest returned mere hours before the feast began. The hunters had brought down a stag. Its head was given a place of honor in the great hall, where all, including the bridal pair, could bask in its blind, bloodied glory.

The chambermaids bathed Zelda in water scented with the unguents she had received as wedding presents; they dressed her in white damask and set silk blossoms in her hair. She sat beside Lord Dragmire this time. He did not look at her as she was seated, but the corners of his eyes crinkled, ever so slightly, and he said, "I hope that this evening finds you well, princess."

"It does." Her lips barely moved as she stared out over the tables. Dignitaries from the Gorons, the Zora, and the desert folk sat at the head table; their escorts were seated below the salt, among Hylian courtiers. The air hummed. She smelled spiced beer and hippocras, broth and roasted veal, Hylian loach rubbed with garlic and stuffed with onions, nuts, and cheese. Her stomach ached—though she did not know if it was from hunger or nerves.

"And does this evening find you well, my lord?"

"As well as may be hoped." He shifted. His chair creaked. "We leave before first light."

Her stomach twisted. Nerves, then.

"My lord." She turned, suddenly, to him. "I still wish that my lady might join us. Perhaps… the hunt… has it—?"

"Softened me?" His smile was crooked. It left his eyes untouched. "No."

"Please, Lord Dragmire."

He looked at her, finally. "You are resolved, then, to have your way?"

"I will not stop asking," she said, a little breathless.

"And I will not say yes." He turned away.

The meal was served, seven courses, each more splendid than the last. Jellies and cakes were sculpted to resemble eagles, swans, and a seven-pronged crown; whole boars were served, spilling candied fruit, roasted nuts, and hard cheeses from their mouths. But on Zelda's tongue, parched by anxiety and soured by growing despair, each course tasted like the talcum powder the chambermaids had sprinkled between her breasts and thighs following her bath. By the fourth course, she found that she could choke down only the spiced beer.

People shot her underhanded glances as they ate, until even the beer became too much for her to swallow.

The final course was served, than cleared away. A silence fell across the room. King Harkinian teetered to his feet, his chair scraping the stone of the dais.

"Well," he said, slurring the word until it sounded like a groan, "some feast."

There was some pounding of fists and feet from the less civilized members of the party.

Harkinian grinned and raised a chalice. Beer slopped down the side. "My friends," he continued. "My allies. Today is a day for great rejoicing. Today, we celebrate a union—of kingdoms, of man and wife—though they aren't yet man and wife. _That _particular union must wait a little longer."

Laughter, again, perhaps from the uncivilized few and several more unhinged by the hippocras. Zelda closed her eyes.

"Who are they, you may ask?" Harkinian's voice rang against the rafters. "It's no secret, you've heard the banns. Lord Ganondorf Dragmire, king of Gerudo Valley, means to take my daughter and make her his queen." He saluted the Mandrag with his chalice. "The best of luck to you, good sir." His voice dropped to a muddy slur. "You might make a woman of this waif yet."

Lord Dragmire rose. Zelda, shaking, followed suit. Harkinian set down his cup and moved between them. Two pages scrambled onto the dais and took up positions on either side of the king. In their hands they bore velvet cushions. Upon each lay a plain, silver ring.

"First," Harkinian boomed, "the exchange of rings."

Lord Dragmire moved first. He plucked the ring nearest him from its cushion and took Zelda's hand. His palm dwarfed hers. He pushed the ring onto her finger.

She took her own ring and fumbled for the Mandrag's hand. She shook so hard that she nearly dropped the silver band. But she tightened her grip and eased it onto Lord Dragmire's finger.

"And finally, the binding of hands." Harkinian took the be-ringed hands of princess and Gerudo lord and pressed them together.

"Do you promise, Ganondorf Dragmire, to wed this girl within a fortnight of your arrival in Gerudo Desert, as is written in the treaty that makes this union sacred?"

"I do," said Lord Dragmire.

"And do you, Zelda Harkinian, promise to wed this man within a fortnight of your arrival in Gerudo Desert, as is written in the treaty that makes this union sacred?"

It took three tries for Zelda to whisper, "I _do_."

"Then in the name of Din, who did create this land; Farore, who did breathe life into it; and Nayru, who did bind this land with sacred law—in the name of Triforce our heavenly mothers did leave us as a token of their affection—may there be peace."

Harkinian dropped their hands and gestured for his chalice. But Ganondorf did not release Zelda at once. He turned with her to the crowd, who sat silent, breaths bated. He raised their joined hands.

"May there be peace," he said.

And slowly, like a storm rolling in from the lake, the people of Hyrule began to clap.

**oOo**

**Author's Note: **My _goodness_, you all, I never expected the surge of support you've given me since my last update. I've been so happy all week that I've been at a loss, xD Thank you, thank you, thank you so _much_, everyone who read and commented and favorite and followed this tale of mine. I'm sorry that I've been so bad about replying, but rest assured: I treasure each and every review.

Next chapter next Friday.


	6. Journey

**oOo**

VI

JOURNEY

When Zelda awoke, Impa was gone.

In her place stood a chambermaid with a lantern, gazing with anxious expression down at her. "My lady?" The girl's voice was a breath among the rustles, bumps, and murmurs that drifted in from the outer chambers. "You must rise now. The Gerudo lord will be off soon."

Zelda slipped from bed. "Where is Impa?"

"I cannot say, my lady. She sent for us, with instructions to have you ready and your things carried out to the horses—but when we got here, she was gone."

Panic twanged deep in Zelda's stomach.

But the chambermaid did not give the princess time to brood; she took Zelda's elbow and drew her toward a wooden tub. There were other chambermaids, their faces a kaleidoscope of lamp-lightened skin and shadow. The lantern made their expressions look raw and haunted.

They bathed her, in water so cold that it burned. "I'm sorry we couldn't warm the water, my lady," the first chambermaid kept saying, "but we got so little notice."

"I see," Zelda murmured, through shuddering teeth. She wondered if anyone in the castle, beyond Impa, the Gerudo, her father, and herself, had realized that she would be leaving quite so soon. Even as the chambermaids dried and rubbed her with talcum powder, the realization that she would soon be quit of these walls did not seem quite real.

The chambermaids dressed her in a gown of blue linen, then helped her into a fitted jacket, outer petticoat, and gloves: riding garments. "I will be riding all the way?" Zelda asked, watching the bent head of the girl who laced up her boots. Zelda had reflexively imagined that a litter or a caroche would carry her as far as Lake Hylia. She had never quite considered the realities of traveling with the Gerudo.

Indeed, Zelda had never closely considered this new chapter in her life. She felt like a blindfolded horse, guessing nothing of the road before her, content to tiptoe along. It was safer that way—folding herself into Hylian histories and astronomical treatises, taking her meals when they were set before her, never acknowledging that she was a woman grown, a woman betrothed, a woman who could no longer command the protection of her father's house.

"I could not say, my lady," said the chambermaid, breaking into Zelda's thoughts. She knotted the last lace and rose. "The Sheikah lady just gave us instructions that you were to be dressed for riding."

"A horse, surely?" another chambermaid piped up.

"Of course a horse, silly girl," said the first maid, under her breath, but not so low that she could not be heard.

"Only—I've heard the Gerudo ride wild _boars_," the second girl continued. "As big as the one as got himself speared by King Daphnes, all them centuries ago."

"Hush," said the first maid. "The princess shan't be riding a boar."

"But down in the kitchen they say the Thief Lord himself do!" The second chambermaid sounded bewildered, as if she did not understand why her companion contradicted her story. The first chambermaid pinched her.

"Shut up!" she hissed.

"Thief Lord?" Zelda tilted her head at the quarreling girls; under the weight of her attention, they sobered. "Is that the name by which Lord Dragmire is known?"

The first girl bobbed. "Apologies, my lady." She shot her companion a sour look. "She's new to service, young—her tongue runs off with her."

"Do not apologize, please. I merely wondered—" But Zelda could see in the girl's shuttered expression that the chambermaid had said her piece. The princess let the matter drop.

"If your ladyship would follow me to the salon." A third chambermaid poked her head around the door. "We've brought you a tray from the kitchens."

"Thank you." Zelda paused. "Has the Lady Impa returned?"

"I have not seen her, your ladyship, no."

Zelda's mouth tightened. The thought of eating, with Impa missing and Zelda's departure so near, soured her stomach.

"Princess?" The chambermaid cast Zelda an anxious glance. "Will you come?"

"I will eat on the road," Zelda said and slipped past her. "Thank you for your trouble."

The door of Zelda's quarters stood open. Manservants and chambermaids carried trunks and bundles out into the hall, overseen by a handful of stewards. The princess moved among them, careful to steer clear of the baggage. Her progress caught the servants off guard: they staggered to a standstill, mumbled her name, attempted obeisance.

Zelda followed the stream of servants out of her rooms and down the hall, toward the courtyard. She hoped that she had not miscalculated, hoped that she would find Impa outside, dogging Lord Dragmire, protesting his injustice.

The entrance hall swarmed with servants and courtiers, some Gerudo, most Hylian. The hall was quiet, humming with low voices, as if the people moving through it were in the Temple, at worship. The hush chilled the princess.

Through the open double doors, Zelda could see a long rope of pack animals and horses, silvered by a full moon. The Gerudo escort sat mostly a-horse; it was the Hylian courtiers who still scrambled around on the ground, overburdened with baggage and awkward in their long-toed slippers and flowing sleeves. She caught sight of a Hylian sage, robed in russet-red, clambering stiffly onto a horse with the help of two squires.

She recognized other faces: the old, withered Gerudo, Kotake, in riding trousers, with a shawl about her head and shoulders to ward off the predawn chill; the servants girls Nabooru had brought to Zelda's chambers; Nabooru herself, hands clasped behind her and legs spread in a militaristic stance. She stood, at attention, beside Lord Dragmire's horse. On her other side stood a woman, her white braid hanging to her hips, gazing over the crowd, stretched to her full height.

"Impa," Zelda breathed and hurried over.

Impa spotted her the instant she moved. She left Nabooru's side and met Zelda halfway.

"Have you spoken with Lord Dragmire?" Zelda clutched at the Sheikah's forearms. Her insides curdled with anticipation.

"I have." Impa breathed, sharply. Her hands tightened. "He will not allow me to come."

Dread washed into Zelda's throat, vinegary and stale. "_Why_?"

"It does not matter now."

Zelda twisted in the Sheikah's grip. "It _does_. Impa, I must find him, I must—"

"_No_." Impa forced her back around. "It is done."

"I cannot simply give you _up_—" Zelda's throat contracted.

"And you will not. Hear me, princess." Impa leaned close. Her words brushed Zelda's ear, warm and wet; the princess shivered. "I have accepted Nabooru's offer. Her girls will serve you on your journey, and when you have arrived in the desert, Nabooru will see that the girls assigned to you can be trusted."

"Trusted? To do what?"

"To give you my letters. To arrange visits." Impa hunkered down and cupped Zelda's face between her hands. "To be good to you."

And at this, any fight that might have remained in Zelda left her. She sagged. "I see."

"All is not lost. There will be letters. Visits. Nabooru has promised to speak to Lord Dragmire. You must, as well. Make him see reason. I am your companion, not your nursemaid. Not anymore."

Zelda covered Impa's hands with her own. "Perhaps he does not wish me to have companions," she said. She heard the coldness in her own voice. She felt nothing.

Impa made a sound of disgust deep in her throat. "Do not speak so. If you are to live among the Gerudo, Zelda, you must be more than this—_self pity_."

Zelda stiffened. "I do not know what you mean."

Impa's gaze turned to flint. "You do."

Zelda pulled back. But Impa had tucked her palms behind the princess's head, curled her fingers at the nape of Zelda's neck. "You are a Hylian princess," Impa said. "_Act_ like one."

For a moment, she looked so fierce, so unlike herself, that Zelda nearly jerked away. But there was an exhaustion in the Sheikah's eyes that Zelda had never seen before. It gave her pause.

"Tell me that you will do as I say," Impa said.

"Princess!"

Nabooru's voice echoed over the thrum of activity. Zelda looked up. Lord Dragmire's regent sat astride her horse. She help up an arm. "Princess," she called again. "We ride, now."

Zelda's gaze shifted past Nabooru. Lord Dragmire had materialized, mounted, and sat with his hands folded upon his saddle horn. The moonlight faded his shirt to the color of milk, bleached the Gerudo embroidery of his riding vest to a formless motif as pale as blood in water. His eyes roved among the Hylians. He looked bored.

She stared at him until she caught his eye. They regarded one another for so long that Impa's hands fell away and she turned her head to see what had commanded Zelda's attention. When she caught sight of Lord Dragmire, her lip curled back and she grunted with disapproval. But Lord Dragmire had eyes only for the princess. He sat, motionless, until Zelda inclined her head. He turned his horse toward her with a single, careless flick of the reins.

"Mount up, princess," he said, in a voice that cracked through the murmur of people, baggage, and horses. "We ride."

Zelda watched his horse approach, one deliberate, thunderous _clop_ at a time, until it was upon her, past her.

She opened her mouth and pushed out her voice as loud as it would go.

"_Yes_, my lord."

Lord Ganondorf Dragmire did not look back.

**oOo**

Princess Zelda mounted her horse with the help of several courtiers, a clambering gaggle of men stuffed into jerkins too brightly colored and brashly embellished for that hour of the morning. A few tried to kiss her hand, as they expressed their congratulations. She nodded, jerkily, and wiped the drool someone had left on the back of her hand onto her skirt.

Impa pressed her hand and stood beside her as the crowd parted to allow King Harkinian through. The King of Hyrule looked dressed for a funeral, in a sable jerkin and grey hose. The toes of his shoes were short and blunt. He wore a wool tabard emblazoned with the crest of the Royal Family: a bird, outlined in gold braid, with its crimson wings stretched above the Triforce that sat in place of its head.

He took Zelda's hand and squeezed it, too hard, then lifted his voice and turned toward their audience. "Be a good wife, my princess. The goddesses bless good women who are dutiful and modest. I wish you happiness. Hyrule is grateful."

He glanced back to her. Her stomach knotted; she wondered if she should kiss his cheek, as a good daughter would. She bent toward him.

"Do not shame me," he said, when her face was inches from his.

She froze. "Never, my lord."

He dropped her hand and turned his back. The courtiers parted as he strode away.

**oOo**

Castle Town lay silent, sleeping, as the Princess Zelda and her escort filed through the square.

The princess had never seen the town so deserted. She disliked the echo of horses' hooves in the narrow streets, shrank from the vagrant dogs, the glittering eyes of silent townsfolk, lost behind window glass, torches, the moon-tossed shadows of columns, archways, and balconies.

A phalanx of guards watched Zelda as they saluted; she saw how their heads turned to follow her.

The company moved like ghosts through the torchlight that illuminated the gatehouse. The horses rumbled across the drawbridge. Zelda listened to the lap and murmur of the moat.

And far too soon, the town and bridge shrank away, as the company kept west, until the moonlight revealed only a wending, mountainous passage when Zelda looked behind her.

She could not even see the towers, the red pennants, the crenellations. Cliffs loomed to either side of her. It was as if Hyrule Castle had been wiped away by a goddess's hand.

**oOo**

The ride to Gerudo Valley was long and exhausting. It lasted four days.

By the afternoon of the first day, Zelda ached so fiercely that when she staggered from her horse, she was saved from falling only by the strong arm of a Gerudo. She recognized the Gerudo as one of Nabooru's girls, the tallest one. She could not remember the girl's name.

The girl eyed the princess sideways, her mouth twitching as if she wished to say something. She kept her silence for an entire minute.

Zelda tottered in a circle, in an attempt to ward off cramps.

"Does my lady not ride?" the Gerudo girl asked, finally. Her voice was unexpectedly soft, her words touched with laughter. Zelda took the girl's loose smile and sly glance for mockery.

"I ride." The heat of the day had sharpened Zelda's voice and left her unsteady on her feet. She turned away. But even as she did, she heard her sharp tone and was sorry. She glanced back. The Gerudo's expression had clouded over.

"But only very little," Zelda amended. She turned back, a little awkward, not quite able to meet the girl's eyes. "I… I suppose I will have to grow accustomed to it."

"Oh _yes_," the girl said. Her voice was dismissive. "Or my lady will make a bad Gerudo."

The disdain in her voice stung.

**oOo**

The first leg of the journey took the cavalcade westward, within sight of the Great Hylian Bridge. At twilight, they stopped at Lake Hylia's sole inn—Fyer and Falbi's Watering Hole of Fantastication, a labyrinth of sooty walls and damp floors. The landlord—a lanky, ill-dressed man with popping eyes and a desperate grin—stumbled over himself in his haste to show his regal guests to their chambers. He took to Zelda like a cat to cream, much to the princess's dismay.

"The _honor_—!" he said, grasping her hand and sweeping a bow so low that his tulip-shaped hat brushed the floor. "Your ladyship—_never_ would I have imagined the day—!"

"Yes," said Zelda, flinching backward as he straightened and the tulip hat whipped past, inches shy of hitting her nose.

"I hope this lakeside Elysium will delight you, your ladyship. I shall order a feast prepared in your honor! A salute from a cannon—"

"A cannon—?"

"My fantastic friend and comrade, Fyer, runs the Human Cannonball down on the waters of Lake Hylia," the landlord said. "Simply say the word, and I will have him fire a round in your name! Or perhaps—" And here his eyes glittered, "you yourself would like to go skyward! Say the word, your ladyship, and Fyer will shoot you toward the sun! For half price!"

"Oh," said Zelda. "I would not like to be shot from a cannon. No thank you."

"Indeed. A cannon is perhaps too rough." The landlord looked thoughtful. "But you may still fly, your ladyship! This very watering hole is the site of the renowned Falbi's Flight-by-Fowl. Simply say the word and you can fly a Cucco down to the lake. There are adventures to be had! Money to be won! And all of it for the low price of fifteen rupees."

"Truly." Zelda disengaged her hand. "I do not wish to fly, either by cannon or Cucco."

The landlord shook his head and looked at her with pity. "A shame. But Fyer and I shall always be here, should you ever change your mind!"

Zelda smiled tightly. "I do not think I will."

He looked her up and down, as if he did not believe her. "Well," he said, "do enjoy your stay, your ladyship." He bowed and whisked himself off to the kitchens.

**oOo**

Zelda stayed in a room between Nabooru and Kotake's quarters. Her chamber smelled of sweat and fish and overlooked the lake. Zelda was gazing out of the window, down into the water, when a knock on the door made her jump.

"Yes?"

"Princess?" The door creaked open to reveal Nabooru. "I hope you have been comfortable so far."

"I have been." Zelda turned to face her. "Thank you."

"Kotake and I have ordered supper. Will you join us?"

"I will."

A grim-faced kitchen drudge brought bowls of cinnamon stewed cabbage, ale-flavored bread, and hippocras to Nabooru's room. "Swill," muttered Kotake, when the drudge had gone and the women sat eating. She prodded her cabbage with a knife. "There is more cinnamon than vegetable in here."

Zelda, who had been enjoying the cabbage, tried to sop up the cinnamon sauce with her bread a little less enthusiastically.

"We will be home soon," Nabooru said, around a mouthful of bread.

"Not soon enough." Kotake quaffed her hippocras, winced, and coughed. Nabooru eyed her across the table.

"Lady Kotake?"

The older Gerudo massaged her throat. "There is mustard seed in this hogwash."

Nabooru sipped her own drink and grimaced. "Well."

She smiled at Zelda, who had been watching the Gerudo askance. Nabooru set her tumbler on the table and said, "How do you find this meal, princess?"

"It is adequate."

Kotake snorted. "Now that is faint praise."

"I have never eaten in a Hylian inn before," Nabooru continued. "I hope they are all not like Fyer and Falbi's." She paused. "But when we reach the desert, there will be caravansaries. Great, sprawling inns with vast courtyards and good beds. The food is not too bad, either."

"I see," said Zelda.

Nabooru rose and stepped over to the window. "See those cliffs?" She pointed to the rightmost edge of the lake, where crags jutted toward the black sky. "There is a mountain path that snakes up among them. Up, until the lake is a thumbprint—and then down the other side, until the rocks turn to dunes and you are in the desert."

She went still, her finger pressed to the windowpane.

"It will be good to go back," she said, so low that Zelda almost did not hear her.

**oOo**

The princess huddled, that night, among dank sheets, hiding her face from the moonlight. She had lain awake ever since she had retired, had heard her maids settling down and had listened to the creak of the inn's patrons returning to their rooms. She brooded until her mind was feverish with thoughts of her old bedchamber; of Impa; of the black hole that was the desert, crouched among the cliffs, waiting to swallow her.

Of Lord Dragmire and what he would do to her once she was his wife.

**oOo**

The cavalcade left Fyer and Falbi's Watering Hole of Fantastication early the next morning, as dawn turned the cliffs surrounding Lake Hylia to pale rose. They began their ascent into the mountains surrounding Gerudo Desert.

The climb continued into the early dusk, when the company halted and made camp. Zelda ate again with Nabooru—savory veal cakes softened in hippocras and followed by dates in wine syrup—while the servants put up her tent. She bent over a slender volume of Hyrulian poetry, hoping it would discourage conversation. Eating with Nabooru was safer than sitting by herself, where any courtier might take her solitude as a sign of distress. But the princess was not eager to talk with the Gerudo woman. The climb had exhausted her. She felt limp and emptied out.

But Nabooru appeared unaffected by the day's exertions—indeed, she moved with an energy unlike any she had displayed back in Castle Town. She swigged her hippocras and scarfed three little cakes. She eyed Zelda's book, until the princess noticed her.

"What are you reading?" Nabooru asked.

"Poetry."

"I can see that." The older woman laughed. "But what it is about? Who wrote it?"

"Various authors." Zelda leafed through several pages. "Hylian mostly. And Zora. A few Gorons."

Nabooru lifted an eyebrow. "No Gerudo?" She spoke lightly.

"One." Zelda paused. "She writes very movingly of war."

For the briefest of moments, Nabooru's brow furrowed. "I do not doubt it. Let me guess: the poet is Yessmin of Gerudo Valley. 17th century; _The Thief's Song_?"

Zelda looked at the Gerudo in surprise. "It is _The Thief's Song_, yes. Do you know it?"

Nabooru snorted. "What Gerudo does not?"

Zelda blushed. "Of course."

"Have you ever read other Gerudo poets?" Nabooru asked.

"A few."

Nabooru's face cleared. "That is good. Yessmin is not our only poet." She plucked a date from her bowl and flicked the extra syrup from it. "And war and theft are not our only concerns." She tossed the date into her mouth. Zelda turned back to her book.

"You would like the library," Nabooru said, after a moment. "We have two, actually. One in the Spirit Temple. The other is in the palace. Ganond—Lord Dragmire—he curates that one."

Zelda's head snapped up.

"Yes." Nabooru gave a wry smile. "War and theft are not our only concerns. Though…" Her smile grew rueful. "I cannot rule out theft entirely."

Zelda closed her book. "May anyone go into the libraries?"

Nabooru laughed softly. "You are not simply anyone, princess."

When Zelda did not reply, Nabooru continued, "I have been meaning to ask you. How do you like the girls, then?"

Zelda blinked. "The girls—my maids?"

"Hmm." Nabooru popped dates into her mouth and nodded.

"They are very kind. They are good at what they do."

The Gerudo girls, whose names Zelda still did not know, were indeed competent: that morning, they had had Zelda dressed and on her horse before the Hylian maids had fully awoken. The rapid pace of the journey bewildered the Hylian girls—they moved slowly and rode awkwardly, too used to caroches and litters to find the saddle comfortable. The cut of their dresses made travelling cumbersome. Were it not for the attention of the Gerudo girls, Zelda would not have fared much better.

But the princess could not be at ease around the Gerudos. She wondered if they resented her, a second mistress when they already waited on Nabooru. And they spoke Gerudo with such quick, fluid grace that Zelda could not follow their conversation; she could only guess, from the way they giggled, and their hooded eyes followed her, that they taunted at her. She shrank, especially, from the arch glance of the Gerudo girl who had helped her from her horse the first day. She winced to remember their conversation.

"Keep them," Nabooru said now. "They'll attend to you when we reach the Valley."

Zelda stiffened. "I would not want to deprive you—"

Nabooru waved a hand. "Never mind me. Consider them my gift."

Zelda retired to her tent at the end of the meal. A Hylian maid helped unlace her traveling gown. "Will that be all, your ladyship?" the girl asked.

"Yes." Zelda slipped beneath the blankets strewn across her cot. "Would you please hand me the lantern? I wish to read a bit."

When the girl had given her the lantern, Zelda found the page where she had left off in her book: a collection of philosophical verses written by Hylian sages. Her fingerprints smudged the vellum.

But she had lost interest in abstractions. She thumbed through the pages, eyes glazed. Stray thoughts intruded: the warmth of Lord Dragmire's hand when he had escorted her into the great hall. The way he had stroked her neck. The heat of his caress, haunting her to distraction.

She drew in a sharp breath, shut her book, and turned down the lantern. Her eyes swam. Her head pounded.

And when she slept, she dreamed of Gerudo Desert.

_The desert was a chasm, a scar ripped through the belly of the earth. Lord Dragmire stood beside her. They looked into the scar together._

_"All this," Lord Dragmire said, "is yours."_

_She looked at him. "I do not want it." Her voice rasped. "I want to go home."_

_"This is home." He turned and lifted her in his arms. He pressed her backward, and for a moment her body deserted her in a wave of terror. He would push her over the edge of the chasm. She would break upon the stones that littered its bottom._

_But there was no chasm. A wall of craggy stone dug, instead, into her back. She shuddered as Lord Dragmire came closer, closer, and finally pinned her to the wall. He trapped her arms above her head. Her feet scrabbled for purchase, even as her breathing slowed to match his._

_"It is yours," he said. "Just as you are mine."_

_His mouth was on her neck. A single, convulsive tremor shot through her spine—and then she stilled. She shut her eyes._

_The rock folded around her like a shroud._

**oOo**

**Author's Note**: A million and one apologies for the delay in posting this. This chapter gave me absolute heck.

Next chapter between this Friday and next Monday.


	7. Wedding

**Author's Note:** Trigger warning for implied non-con.

**oOo**

VII

WEDDING

The company came in sight of Gerudo Fortress three days after they descended into the desert.

Dusk stole across the sand, throwing the shadows of cliffs and fortified walls over the cavalcade. They passed through a labyrinth of lookout posts. Zelda stared up into the mazy stakes and sun-beaten platforms. Women with glaives and covered faces peered down at her, their eyes grim and golden.

At first, all Zelda could make out of the fortress was its ramparts—sprawling slabs of red stone that she could barely distinguish from the surrounding crags. The gates opened upon a tangle of barracks, watchtowers, and saw-toothed palisades. Zelda stopped counting the twists and turns and dour-eyed sentinels after a while. She looked, instead, for slivers of sky among the battlements and murder-holes.

But the sky did not reappear until the company reached the courtyard.

A second gate and stone corridor separated the cantonment from the fortress proper. The fortress crouched in the shadow of mountain, a heap of granite and sandstone that made Zelda think of little square houses all piled together. A long, steep flight of stairs cut through the buildings; with her eyes, the princess followed the flight up to a column-lined passage that ended in an archway. The entrance gaped black and empty.

Zelda dismounted, with the help of one her maids, and stood staring up at unlit doorway. Her body ached and her legs shook. Her throat was full of dust, her eyes full of sand, and the fortress blurred like a smudge on glass. She wanted to shut her eyes and sleep where she stood.

"Well?" Nabooru's voice made Zelda flinch. "It is not what you were imagining, I take it."

It took the princess a moment to register Nabooru, watching her with a smiling mouth and doubtful eyes, another moment to find words. "It is not what I imagined, no," Zelda began, "but—" She faltered. "It is… it is…"

Her brain was muddled. She could not think of what the fortress was, except not Hylian.

Nabooru touched her shoulder. "Nevermind. We've only just arrived. Will you join me for supper?"

Zelda summoned a smile. "I thank you." Her voice was faint. "But I think I will forgo food. I am tired."

The press of Nabooru's hand tightened. "A proper meal will wake you up," she said. "There are things we should discuss."

Nabooru's insistence drained Zelda of all argument. "As you wish, my lady."

"Do not mistake this for a command," Nabooru said, dropping her voice.

"Please." Zelda laid her own hand, briefly, upon the regent's, then slipped free. "You need not explain yourself to me. I will join you at your table."

"I would not ask you so soon. Only, Elder Koume will wish to meet you."

"Elder Koume?"

"Yes." Nabooru jerked her chin across the yard, where the old Gerudo woman, Kotake, handed off her horse to servant. "Elder Kotake's sister. That is how you must refer to them, now—as Elder. Or as the Twinrova, if you mean to speak of them both."

A flutter of white caught Zelda's eye. The princess looked up. A gaggle of women dressed in white trousers and short robes were approaching her and Nabooru from the direction of the endless steps. Their lamps winked feebly in the dusk.

Nabooru followed her gaze. "Handmaidens. They'll ready you for dinner. I will send one of your girls to show you to my rooms afterward." She squeezed Zelda's shoulder.

By the time the handmaidens had reached the princess, Nabooru had stalked off; Zelda watched her retreating back. She felt winded, as if Nabooru's departure had taken something from her. The princess was alone now, among women she did not know—among _thieves_, she thought, remembering the Hylian servant saying, "Thief Lord!" back in Lanayru.

_It does not matter_. She turned to look at the handmaidens, arrayed before her with their heads bent and eyes averted. _I am a Hylian Princess. I shall not be afraid_.

"Lady Princess?" One of the handmaidens stepped forward. She had a clear, sweet girl's voice, but her Hylian was awkward. "With us will you come?"

"Of course," Zelda said.

The women encircled her. They raised their lamps to illuminate the endless steps, and the princess followed them, squinting against the light, stumbling with fatigue.

The archway at the top of the steps opened upon an even longer flight that descended into the belly of the fortress. The stairs ended in a cavernous room. Dim shapes bloomed from the darkness: a circle of armless statues, a chandelier. The women led her to the right, down a series of corridors. Zelda's legs trembled with effort.

The braziers burning above her left watery patterns on the walls. She caught occasional glimpses of Gerudo calligraphy, scrawled in black ink along the stone lips of niches. The niches held painted pots, slender crocks of milk glass, and weapons. But beyond this, the corridors were empty of decoration, the flagstone uncarpeted. Zelda wondered. The Gerudo displayed such extravagance in their dress and ornaments. And yet their fortress suggested that they were more monastic than any desert-dwelling hermit.

She shuddered. She had spent the nights on the road imagining a Hylian welcome: tapestried rooms and hearths to ward off the chill, beds stuffed with eiderdown. The blank walls around her suggested no such comforts.

At long last, the women guided her down a corridor that ended in pair of massive double doors. Guardswomen flanked each door; they bowed from their waists as Zelda and her escort passed into an antechamber. "The Consort's Corridor," one of the Gerudo said, gesturing around. "This wing of the fortress is your own, Lady Princess. No woman nor man may enter this place without your consent."

Zelda tilted her head. "_No one_ may enter? This place is entirely my own?"

"Yes, Lady Princess. To rule as you please. Such is the way of the Consort's Corridor."

Zelda's stomach stirred—but not, for once, from dread. She looked around, at the braziers plated in silver and embossed with Gerudo calligraphy, at the round-bellied pots, the doors painted with fading boar's skulls. From the direction of the ceiling, she heard a rustling that she took for a draft—or for Keese.

_No woman, nor man—_

"Not even the king?" she asked.

"No, Lady Princess, not even the king."

The corridor took on a new vibrancy, as Zelda followed the handmaidens up a third flight of stairs. This was her kingdom, within these Gerudo walls. She shivered with anticipation.

The women led her through a hive of rooms—for sleeping, for dining, for reading, for bathing. In this final chamber, Zelda undressed and stepped into a bath clouded with milk. It smelled of honey and spices. The women soaped and scrubbed her until she felt raw. Her feet ached when she stepped back onto the marble floor; her skin prickled beneath the pile of the towels, as a woman patted her dry. But she no longer smelled of sweat and hard riding. The bath had numbed her saddle sores.

They robed her in thin silk, braided her hair, and shod her in soft slippers. As Nabooru had promised, one of Zelda's maids materialized in the doorway. "If you would follow me, Princess." Her voice was stiff. "Lady Nabooru and the Elder Twinrova await you."

**oOo**

"So," said Nabooru, when Zelda had seated herself at table, "how do you like the fortress now?"

"It is still early." Zelda smiled faintly. The scented milk bath had numbed her brain; even the sweet smell of honey-drizzled figs that Nabooru was eating could not keep the princess alert. The Elder Twinrova were not in evidence, despite the Gerudo maid's words, and so Zelda allowed herself to sit back and rest her eyes. "Tell me about the Consort's Corridor," she said.

"It is yours," Nabooru said, simply. "When the ruler of the Gerudo marries, the corridor belongs to her—or his—consort. It is your space to do as you please. No one but you may preside in that wing of the fortress. Not even the king."

"I suppose it is a fair exchange," Zelda said, "now the consort has nothing of his own."

"Yes."

"What happens to a consort when the ruler is dead?"

"We send the men away, if the next queen will not take him. We keep the women and any children."

Zelda felt her body go still. She opened her eyes, sat forward. Nabooru was licking honey off her fingers.

"As consort—" Zelda's voice was a breath, and her stomach began to twist, "what am I expected to do?"

"Anything you wish, princess."

"But as—" Zelda's lips were dry. She licked them and clasped her hands beneath the table. "But as a wife, what am I supposed to do?"

Nabooru glanced sideways at her. "Your duties, you mean, day by day?"

"No. On my wedding night."

Nabooru looked puzzled. "What women _do_ with their men, The usual."

"What… _is_ that, exactly?"

Nabooru stared at her for a very long time.

Zelda looked at the bowl of honeyed fruit. She had known she would have to ask, at some point, about the exact things she would be expected to do as Lord Dragmire's wife, but Nabooru's comment about "any children," had forced Zelda to confront the thought that had haunted her ever since she had left Lanayru. She stole a glance at Nabooru. The regent still gaped at her. Zelda twisted her fingers until they crackled.

"You honestly don't know?" Nabooru said.

Zelda winced. "I know that to be valid, a marriage must be witnessed by the goddesses and… consummated before them. However that is done…"

"Did the Sheikah never tell you? Your mother?" Nabooru turned fully toward her. "Did you ever watch dogs rutting in the great hall?"

"My mother died when I was small. And Impa… she said I should love the man I give myself to… that I must think carefully about it and—"

"There isn't much room to _think_ when your body is the coin of the realm, Zelda," Nabooru said.

The princess stared at her, wild-eyed.

"_Hylians_," Nabooru added, as if this were a particularly foul word.

They sat in silence. Zelda looked at the fruit bowl again. A pattern of burnt orange triangles girdled its base. She could see the shadow of her face in the glaze.

"First of all," Nabooru said, "it will hurt and there will be blood. Probably. Though if you relax, it won't hurt so much."

"Oh," said Zelda. Her hands tightened in her lap. "_Oh_."

A door opened, then. Elder Kotake entered, followed by her sister and a cluster of handmaidens. Azure braid embroidered the robes of one of the Twinrova; red motifs embellished the hems of the other. Kotake's hair was as scarlet as Zelda remembered; the Elder Koume's cropped mane was steely blue. But colors aside, the Twinrova bore more than a passing resemblance to one another. Side by side, it was difficult to see where one great, hooked nose ended and the other began.

"Princess." Kotake nodded. She sat, and her sister thumped into a seat beside her. Koume's eyes were heavy-lidded; she studied Zelda and her thin lips thinned further. She said nothing. Veiled women trailed in, a heartbeat later, carrying steaming platters and bowls of wine.

"We were just talking," Nabooru said. Zelda shot her a desperate look; the regent continued, "About the wedding. I am telling her what to do, once we reach the Spirit Temple."

"Of course you are telling the Hylian what to do," Koume shot back, in Gerudo. "What does she know?" Zelda deciphered the words slowly. She wished that she had practiced speaking and listening to the language more faithfully en route to the fortress.

"Be polite, sister," Kokate said, with a cool glance. She turned to Zelda. "What has Nabooru told you thus far?"

"Very little," Nabooru said, before Zelda could speak. "It is best I leave such explanations to you, Elder Kotake, Elder Koume." She inclined her head. "I know so little."

Her blandishments pleased Koume, who preened, but even then, the old woman did not deign to address Zelda or speak Hylian. She only interjected, now and again, as Kotake described the wedding ceremony—the celebrations, the journey to the Spirit Temple; the bathing and dressing of the bride. "You'll be married in the inner sanctum," Kotake continued, "before the Sand Goddess."

Zelda's stomach lurched. "Not before Din, Nayru, and Farore?"

"Do you fear your marriage will not be valid?" Kotake lips curved toward a smile. Her eyes were flat. "You need not fear. There will be a Hylian sage to bless you in your goddesses' name."

"Pah." Koume gave Zelda an underhanded look. "As long as he beds her, it'll be valid."

Zelda flinched. Koume laughed. "I tell you," she said, spearing a slice of roast goat and popping it into her mouth, "these Hylians know nothing."

And it was true, wretchedly so. Though whether Koume knew just how accurate her jibe was, Zelda never found out.

**oOo**

Nabooru held the princess back, when the servants had cleared away the dinner and the Twinrova had departed.

"Listen," Nabooru said, leaning her elbows on her knees and scrutinizing the pale, drawn face before her, "I'll tell you what to do. At the ceremony. Afterwards. Just… if you don't understand something, tell me." She shrugged. "I don't want to leave out anything."

"Yes," said Zelda. "Thank you."

But even as the words left her mouth, a thought struck her. She spoke before her better judgment could stifle it.

"Must I?"

Nabooru raised her eyebrows. Zelda hurried on.

"Must I go through with it? Not the wedding, but… after… is it so necessary?" The desperation in her voice made her cringe. She thought, fiercely, _I am a Hylian princess_. _I will _not_ be afraid_.

But she was. Oh, goddesses be good, she _was_.

Nabooru grimaced. "You're the Mandrag's consort, princess. Or at least you will be. It comes with the territory." She opened her hands, as if in apology.

**oOo**

Afterward, Zelda remembered little of the day that followed her arrival in Gerudo Fortress. Her handmaidens dragged her from bed before the sun had risen; several hours later, a sedan, draped in silk and borne upon the shoulders of three Gerudo porters, carried her from the Consort's Corridor to the chandelier room.

People thronged the chamber: women resplendent in henna, trailing veils, and brilliantly colored shawls, dripping bangles, precious stones. There were a few men, chief among them the Hylian courtiers who had accompanied Zelda from Lanayru, and the Hylian envoys still established in the fortress. The scent of perfume, roasting meat, and candied fruit choked the air. The Gerudo porters carried Zelda's sedan to the foot of the dais. The princess stepped out into the roar of celebration.

Lord Ganondorf Dragmire regarded her from his throne. She curtsied as best as she could, for her handmaidens had loaded her down in a jeweled collar and peach-pale gown peppered with precious stones. Lord Dragmire rose as she straightened. He descended the steps. She craned her head to look at him. Her earrings snagged in her hair.

He held out his hand. Her body went hot and tight as she took it.

He led her to a divan arranged beside the throne. She sat, tucked her feet beneath the pearl fringe of her gown, and looked out across the gathering. Surely the crowd here surpassed even that which had gathered under her father's roof at the betrothal.

She perched upon the divan for hours, smiling until pain lanced through her jaw, nibbling at the delicacies retainers offered her until she felt sick. There was dancing, music, gifts—so much that the day began to blur into one great smear of color and sound. Her head ached.

The public ceremony took place in the late afternoon. It was brief: Zelda and Lord Dragmire both received a bowl of wine, and a Gerudo priestess blessed each at length. When she had finished, Zelda lifted her bowl to Lord Dragmire as Nabooru had instructed, tipped it so that he might drink. He tilted his own bowl and she sipped. The wine's heady scent smothered her nostrils. The liquid slid, warm, spiced, and syrupy, down her throat. It tasted of dates.

She and Lord Dragmire left in the thick of the celebrations. He took her hand, as he had in her father's house, and led her through a door behind the dais. Nabooru, the Twinrova, two sages—Hylian and Gerudo—and several Hylian courtiers awaited them, alongside a pack horse and a group of handmaidens.

The party rode into the desert as the afternoon slid toward dusk.

**oOo**

Where Gerudo Fortress sat jumbled like a cairn against its mountainous slab of rock, the Spirit Temple towered in solitude against the horizon, as clean cut and deliberate a work of art as the face and torso of the Sand Goddess carved into its crown.

Zelda stared up at the colossus as the party approached. The statue wore a headdress and strings of jewels. Her face was cool and arch, beautiful in the sunset, similar to sculptures of the goddesses that Zelda had seen back in Lanayru. The Sand Goddess looked like Din, Zelda thought, fire smoldering just below her granite skin, proud and roguish and deadly, all in one breath.

She tensed, when Lord Dragmire lifted her from her horse. Wind pulled at his mahogany robes and filled his sleeves; the sight tickled her, even as she combed the wind-lashed hair from her face. But then her eye fell on the temple entrance. She tensed.

_The wedding isn't a long ceremony_, Nabooru had told her. _And you won't be coming back to the fortress, not for a day, at least_.

Dread rose on a sick, toxic tide from Zelda's belly. She pressed her lips together and took Lord Dragmire's proffered hand.

A pair of acolytes, standing at the foot of an ornate staircase flanked by stone cobras, greeted the party. The acolytes gathered up the party's shoes and offered them slippers in return; Zelda felt the crunch of sand, the crumble of loose mortar, as she and Lord Dragmire proceeded up the stairs alone. The rest of the company followed the acolytes through a separate door into the depths of the temple.

King and princess walked until the ceiling lowered and the darkness thickened with incense. Zelda wished she could see the walls. The corridors tightened with every corner they took; she felt as if she were cupped in a giant, sweating hand. Her breathing quickened. Lord Dragmire's feet whispered beside her in the gloom. She heard his breath, slow and steady.

They turned a corner. Torchlight flared. Zelda and Lord Dragmire stepped out into a chamber even more cavernous than the fortress's chandelier room.

A full-body statue of the Desert Colossus sat before them, a hundred feet or more of sandstone woman, with a massive snake wrapped around her waist and a ruby set between her breasts. Her arms were outstretched, her face stiffly regal. At her slippered feet stood a platform lined with torches, garlanded in ivory white cloth.

_That is where you will kneel,_ Nabooru had said, _while the priests bless you_.

King and princess knelt. Zelda watched, from beneath her lashes, the slow steps of the Hylian and Gerudo sages, emerging from opposite sides of the room, murmuring prayers.

_They will anoint you_.

The Gerudo's fingers traced an oiled path down Zelda's face, from forehead to chin. She tasted olives, coconut, a touch of linseed on her lips.

_And then there is the wine. You drink the whole bowl this time. Sipping is just for the public ceremony._

The mingled scent and taste of dates clotted Zelda's throat, as Lord Dragmire tipped the bowl to her lips and she drank, too fast, the wine spilling, her throat closing like a fist around a stone.

He knelt, to accept the wine she held. She watched him drink, the rhythm of his Adam's apple, the quivering lids of his half-shut eyes.

_And when you have drunk, you will kiss him. Seal the deal_. Nabooru had shrugged. _That's the end of it. The ceremony. He will bed you, later, in another part of the temple_.

It was not the end of the wedding, not yet. Lord Dragmire's bowl was empty. Zelda lowered it. He opened his eyes and slid a hand around her waist, drew her down against him. The bowl fell from her nerveless fingers, clattered to the platform. She lost her footing, crumpled onto his lap. She gave a muffled cry, deep in her throat. He pressed his mouth to hers.

She convulsed. Her eyes combed the chamber, wide, frantic. Nabooru had promised it would not be so fast, so vicious, Nabooru—

The sages had turned aside. The Hylian sage's face creased with distaste. Zelda could not see the Twinrova, the acolytes, or the Hylian witnesses. A woman's shadow flickered at the edge of the torchlight. Zelda followed it and found Nabooru half-turned away.

The regent met her eyes. Splayed her hands. The gesture was an apology.

_It comes with the territory_, Nabooru had said, with open hands.

With endless regret.

**oOo**

******A/N:** Thank you, Seldavia, for your help with this chapter. I hope I've done your suggestions justice.


	8. Duty

**oOo**

VIII

DUTY

When sunrise bled across the tiles of the Spirit Temple, Zelda, Queen Consort of the Gerudo, watched her husband rise and go to the window.

Zelda lay coiled in the bed sheets, her eyes half-shut, contemplating the long line of Lord Dragmire's figure in the milky light of dawn. If he turned, she thought, she would close her eyes and pretend to sleep. She tried to keep her breathing slow and deliberate, but her body ached like a fresh, shallow wound. She did not realize that she was holding her breath until Ganondorf spoke.

"Don't be coy, Zelda." His eyes flickered across her, back to the window. "Pretense is unbecoming, even for a Hylian."

She shivered, when his voice broke the silence of the chamber, hearing her name in his mouth. Did his tone never change? He had spoken in that same steely murmur on their wedding night. Always that same voice, whatever he did. Whatever he said. She was not quite sure that the shiver was one of discomfort.

She surfaced from the sheets, unsure of what to say. But before she could speak, Lord Dragmire said, "You will leave this room the Queen Consort, Zelda. But you are not Queen of the Gerudo." He paused. "Do you understand?"

She pushed herself upright, clutching the sheets to her, trembling with exertion when all she wanted was to lie still, her body clamped up like irons. Ganondorf looked at her.

"I said, do you understand?"

It was on the tip of her tongue: _yes, my lord. Of course, my lord_. What right had she to say anything else? She was a Hylian among Gerudo, a girl enthroned over women. Of course she was not their queen.

But another thought niggled at her, tightened the breath in her lungs.

If she yielded, what would be left to her?

She thought of herself, reduced to a shadow in the Consort's Corridor. The decades would blind her, bleach her, buckle her spine. Yes, she would always have her books. And children, perhaps—though she could not fathom what it would be like to want children, let alone have them. But as she sat there, the coming years yawned emptily before her, vast and unfathomable. What would be left to her, if she simply said _yes_?

Instead, she said, "What is the difference, my lord? Between Queen Consort and Queen?" She looked him directly in the eye.

"Well," he said, after a moment, "perhaps I shall indeed make a woman of you yet."

She licked her lips. "What is the difference?"

"A Queen is sovereign ruler." He turned back to the window, as if the answer did not interest him. "The Consort wields no power outside the Consort's Corridor. It is not the way of the Gerudo that two sovereigns may rule at once. There is only ever one sovereign and one consort."

"And what are my duties, as Consort?"

"Whatever I deem fit."

"What is it that you deem fitting, my lord?"

"The Hylian envoys are your first duty. You will see them off when we return to Gerudo Valley. The courtiers and the sage as well. They have overstayed their welcome."

Her stomach twisted. She had not realized just how much comfort she had taken from the presence of the Hylian envoys, courtiers, and sage until now.

"But surely, my lord—" she began.

"Surely _what_?" He stared her down. She shrank back. "Do you champion envoys in lieu of the Sheikah woman, now?"

Again, words tingled on Zelda's tongue: _of course not, my lord. I did not mean—I do not wish—_

But instead she sat silent, staring at the tiles.

What did she mean that she _did not wish_? She _did_ wish. She wanted the Hylians to stay, even if she did not know them well. She did not want to be alone.

She would not be alone, if she could help it.

"My lord?" She peered up at him, from beneath her lashes. "Are there are no stipulations, in the pact between you and my father, that a Hylian presence must be maintained in Gerudo Valley?" Hylians envoys would be necessary to maintain the pact, she thought. She could not represent the Hylians in this desert alone.

Ganondorf quirked an eyebrow. "There is such a provision," he said. "You will suffice."

She caught her breath. "But my—"

Derision crossed his face. She trailed off.

"Such _protest_." Lord Dragmire's eyes raked her, from head to foot, slow as a caress. "I would have never guessed you capable of disapproval, Zelda."

She twisted her hands beneath the sheets. "I am here because of the pact," she said. "And I must ensure that it—" Her voice was so soft, so strained, that she stopped to clear her throat. "I must ensure it is maintained. For my… father's kingdom."

She was King Harkinian's daughter first and foremost, she thought, even if she was also Queen Consort of the Gerudo; she was a daughter, and it was for her father's sake that she was here. It was her duty to remember this.

But when she said "my father," Ganondorf's face darkened. Zelda's stomach twisted. She had said the wrong thing.

Lord Dragmire faced her. She looked away from him, at the floor; she blinked and heard the slap of his bare feet on the tile, as he approached, slow step by slow step. Her body went still.

And then he was upon her, grasping her jaw with a single hand, dragging her face around. She braced herself for his anger but found only frosty disdain. He settled himself onto the bed and she slid against him, her hands jerking in an attempt to catch herself. But in the swaddling of the sheets, her hands were useless.

"Do you fear I will break my promises, Zelda? What is it to you if I do?" Ganondorf's grip relaxed; he stroked a finger down her throat. "What has your father ever done for you, except sell you to me?"

"Please let me go." Her voice was scratchy. She swallowed.

He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. A frisson coursed through her belly at the weight of his arm upon the tops of her thighs.

"He sold me every inch of you." Ganondorf kissed the back of her head. "And before that, he hunted women down like game. With dogs and spears and hunting horns." He kissed her nape. "I could tell you stories about your father, Zelda. About the promises he made." He paused, and his warm breath left a trail of goose bumps down her neck. "I could tell you about your Sheikah woman, too."

_Impa_. Zelda's heart lurched. She dugs her nails into her palm. Her breathing quickened. _Liar_. The word rustled through her mind.

"Protect your father's interests all you want," Ganondorf said, mouth against her ear. "You will be sorry that you did. He had little enough interest in you."

She flexed her hands. She could feel the half-moon craters imprinted in her palm, trailing up toward the base of her thumb. It came to her that Ganondorf did not lie when he spoke of her father, whatever else he meant by his words. A thought crawled from the back of her mind, putrid and ugly, one she had not dared to entertain before now.

_What does your duty mean now, girl? It meant nothing to your father_.

She stared, hollowed-eyed, out across the room.

_I could tell you stories about your father, Zelda_, Ganondorf had whispered. _About your Sheikah woman, too._

_Liar._

"Let me _go_," she said.

Zelda jolted forward, trying to free herself. The king released her jaw, but the arm around her waist was unyielding. She twisted, feet scrambling for purchase.

"Such pro_test_," Ganondorf said again.

"You _lie_," she gasped. Her voice broke, and "lie" came out frail, almost a question. "Impa is good. She—"

Ganondorf stood, hoisting her after him, so that for a moment, she dangled in his arms. He flung her face first against the marriage bed; she wriggled onto her back, gathering the sheets to her, breathing hard. "What had the Lady Impa _done_ to you, that you would—?"

"I have changed my mind," Ganondorf said. His face was grim and unsmiling; he glanced down at her, then away. "We ride at midday for Gerudo Valley. You will see the Hylians off by tonight."

"But—"

He swept the room, as she clutched for words, ducked through an archway that Zelda knew led into a bathing chamber. She stared after him. His words beat through her like a pulse.

_I could tell you stories about your father, Zelda. About the promises he made._

_About your Sheikah woman, too._

"_No_." Her voice quavered in the empty room. "You can tell me _nothing_."

**oOo**

**Author's Note: **Another chapter of the "gave me heck!" persuasion. Hard turns into new storytelling territory can be discombobulating—but entertaining as well, I hope!


	9. Dowry

**oOo**

IX

DOWRY

A horseman rode from the belly of the desert.

The young acolyte stationed on the rear wall of the Spirit Temple caught sight of him only as he crested the surrounding dunes and descended into the temple oasis. The sight jarred her. She could swear upon the Sand Goddess that there had been no horseman a moment before.

It was too late to alert another guard of the intruder. The rider closed in upon the rear gate, his horse's hooves skimming the sand, swift and dogged. The acolyte peered over the wall at him, mouth dry, hands sweaty on the shaft of her glaive.

"Who are you?" she called. Her words vanished into the hot, heavy air. The horseman did not look up.

"Horseman. Who _are you_?" She shouted now, leaning out so far over the wall that she teetered on the balls of her feet. "What do you want?"

The horseman glanced up. A scarlet veil hid his face from the cheekbones down. A cowl, also scarlet, draped his head, pinned back from his eyes by a golden brooch. What the girl could see of his skin looked so pale that she thought she saw hints of blue in his broad, muscled hands.

"State your name," the acolyte called.

The man dismounted in a flurry of robes—scarlet, purple, gold. When he turned to her, she saw a massive eye, stitched in blue thread, at the center of his chest. Her heart squeezed. Who was this man to flaunt the Eye of the Sheikah? All of the Sheikah were dead.

"I have business," the man called, "with King Dragmire."

"State you name."

The man tilted his head. "I cannot do that."

"Why not? Where do you come from?"

"Child." The man's voice thinned. "The king awaits."

She unhooked the horn slung at her hip. Perhaps it was not too late, after all, to summon another guard.

"Call whomever you need if it will make you feel better," the stranger said, his tone dismissive.

The acolyte lifted the horn to her mouth. _Why would he not stop being so difficult?_ She wondered. "What business have you with the king?" She gestured with her chin to his chest. "And why do you wear the Eye of the Sheikah?"

The man said nothing. The acolyte blew a long, warning note.

She swore, later—to herself, to the other guard that she had summoned, and finally to her superior—that while she had blown her horn, she had kept her eyes on the robed stranger. She had neither blinked nor glanced away. And yet, somehow, when she lowered the horn, the man and his horse were gone.

The acolyte stared, for a long time, at the empty space he left behind.

**oOo**

"Wizard Agahnim." Ganondorf Dragmire's voice cracked the silence, when he stepped into the inner sanctum of the Sand Goddess a quarter of an hour later. "I expected to find you already here. What is the meaning of your delay?"

Agahnim knelt before the altar at which Ganondorf had been wed only the evening before. The wizard's posture was not one of prayer—he gazed up into the Sand Goddess's impassive face with a grim, tired expression. At Ganondorf's words, he swiveled on his knees, rose, and pulled aside his veil to reveal powdery blue skin and a sturdy face. He bowed from the waist and peeled back his lips in a grin.

"You do find me here, my friend—belatedly. I had_ meant_ to be here before your returned, but the road home gave me some difficulty. I ran into bandit _Bulblins_." He pronounced this last word with a sensational flourish, then paused when he noticed the frigid look Ganondorf leveled at the symbol stitched onto his robes.

"Three years," the king said. Every syllable dripped disgust. "Three years you have served me and _still_ you flaunt that emblem as shamelessly as any Hylian whore."

Agahnim recoiled. "But the Eye is _harmless_, my friend; it means nothing."

"You know as well as I do the meaning that Eye carries in this place." Ganondorf's lip curled. "Is it so much to ask that you do not vaunt your execrable bloodline in these halls? Among my women?"

It had been centuries since the Sheikah had vanished from the earth, Agahnim thought bitterly—centuries since their Hylian-abetted bloodfeud with the Gerudo had vanished with them—and still Ganondorf Dragmire recoiled from the sight of the Eye as if it were a sword leveled at his heart.

The wizard dropped his eyes. "I meant no insult. It is simply… the Eye has served me well, these past few months."

_As_, he thought, _the Eye has served you—and serves you still._

Elsewhere in Hyrule, men still revered the Sheikah—for their magic, their bond to Hylian royalty, and for the tragedy of their extinction (which had happened, the legends said, in the space of a single night, centuries upon centuries ago). The Eye of the Sheikah commanded respect, and this was one reason why Agahnim wore it. It was his inheritance, though he had less than a quarter of Sheikah blood in him and knew of the Shadow Folk only through books and hearsay.

The benefit that Agahnim had reaped from wearing the Sheikah symbol had lulled him into complacence. He had not forgotten that he served the one man in Hyrule who loathed the Eye. It was that he hoped Ganondorf Dragmire would, after three years, acknowledge his deepening debt to it.

But standing, now, before the King of the Gerudo himself, the wizard trembled and smothered his hope; he swept his outer robes over the Sheikah symbol as if to hide his nakedness.

"I did not consider the pain it would bring you," he finished, with a convulsive shrug. "My deepest apologies."

"Do you _ever _consider anything, Wizard Agahnim?"

"It was a mistake." Agahnim's mouth felt dry, his words like gibberish.

"You will not forget again."

"Of course not."

"Was your entrance observed?"

"It… I did what I could to be inconspicuous. But there was an overeager child on guard. I—"

"She saw the Eye."

Agahnim winced. "I am sorry."

"And she saw your face?"

"She did not."

Ganondorf made a sound deep in his throat, as if he meant to spit. "See to it that that none of my women ever do. You will cover yourself while the Eye is upon your person. I will not burden my Gerudo with the knowledge that a man of Sheikah descent walks among them."

"I understand." Agahnim bowed his head. Vicious thoughts lanced through his brain. Burden the women be _damned_. Ganondorf would not have them learn that he fraternized with a Sheikah. That he trifled with magic that had once terrorized their grandmothers.

"What news have you brought me?" Ganondorf asked.

With the question, the air between the men changed. The king's voice was low and tight, and Agahnim's muscles tensed in response. He felt anxious, but a bright, buoyant energy was humming through him as well, sudden as a geyser. He had been waiting for this moment for three years. More than three years. Even before Ganondorf Dragmire had found him in that hole of a Zuna alehouse, stinking of cheap beer and sick with the weight of his continued failures—long before Ganondorf had seated himself at Agahnim's table, flung a slender volume of Sheikah lore into Agahnim's lap with an almost careless gesture, and whispered, "Come serve me, wizard, and I will give you more books of your people's lore, history, and culture than you ever dreamed could exist,"—_long_ before this, Agahnim had hungered for this moment.

He had not ever supposed that he was share the moment, this _triumph_, with anyone—his family was dead, and no one but a Sheikah would understand. Or so he had supposed—before Ganondorf. Before their bargain.

The wizard withdrew a map, drawn upon a sheet of vellum, from his robes.

"The Sheikah temple whispered of in legend exists," he said. He tried to keep his voice light, but it shook with a sense of victory as raw as anything he had ever felt. "I have found it, my friend. I have found the Shadow Temple at last."

Ganondorf Dragmire went still. "Are you sure?"

"I am." Agahnim's voice broke. "I _am_."

He pressed the vellum into Ganondorf's hands, and his sweat-slicked fingers smeared its furred edge. Ganondorf unfolded the map, perused the heavy blue strokes of its lines. His lips parted. His breath quickened.

"At _last_," he breathed.

"It lies northeast of Death Mountain," Agahnim said. "I felt its vibrations deep in the mountain slopes. I felt, too—" and here his voice dropped, and his face changed, bending with dismay as the anxiety returned and engulfed his buoyancy, "a shadow. A sickness. It was something I have never felt before. Not even even in burial grounds. Not even in crypts."

"But how did it look?"

Agahnim's face clouded. "I did not—"

"No." Ganondorf snapped around. "You will tell me this in private. Let us walk."

Agahnim armed himself with a torch, as he followed Ganondorf from the inner sanctum. He lit it with a gesture, a muttered word.

The king led him down a labyrinth of low-ceiling corridors. The halls were gloomy, even where the torchlight licked the stone with its weedy, yellow flame. Sand rasped beneath Agahnim's boots. The wizard stepped with care, feeling for splintered flagstones and fragmented brickwork, crunching the husks of dead poison mites. The stale air and the smoke from his torch clouded his lungs.

They walked for so long that the silence began to grate on Agahnim. "Dragmire," he began. "There is something I must tell you about the temple—"

Ganondorf snapped his fingers and raised a fist for silence.

But Agahnim could not contain his need to fill the hush. "Rumor has it," he began again, "that you have a wife."

Ganondorf did not answer.

"The alehouses hum with news of her," Agahnim said. He tried to smile, to forget the tendril of misgiving that threaded through him whenever he thought of the Shadow Temple, that was supposed to be his triumph and yet was not quite one. "Shall I have a chance to see this Hylian rose? It is said that she is very beautiful."

"She is Hylian," Ganondorf said, quietly. "Rumor exaggerates."

Agahnim snorted. "I hope her dowry compensates."

Ganondorf's mouth twitched. "It does. As I expected that it would."

Agahnim inclined his head. "Indeed?"

But Ganondorf had finished speaking.

At long last, the corridor down which they walked dead-ended. Ganondorf passed his hand through the air and murmured a word. The face of the stone began to bubble and bleed white.

In seven heartbeats, the paint formed the picture of a boar's skull. Chalky white trickled to the flagstone and gave the boar a garish, gruesome appearance.

"I do not remember this," Agahnim said.

"Then you have been absent far too long."

The king splayed light fingers above the boar's empty eyes and spoke a string of words. The slab groaned, dribbled a plume of dust and stones, and wrenched sideways to reveal a doorway.

He followed the king into the chamber. Ganondorf spoke another incantation. Mounted braziers flared to life, bathing the room in a muted, bloody glow. The air was stale and fetid with the stench of what was surely spellwork gone wrong. A brew of charred vellum, blood, contagion, piss burned Agahnim's nose. He raised his sleeve to cover his face.

Ganondorf looked at him. The wizard dropped his arm.

"Does the smell of Gerudo magic offend you?" The king leveled a humorless grin at Agahnim, as he stepped toward a littered desk hulked in a corner of the room. He had unfolded Agahnim's map of the temple in Faron Woods.

"I _have_ been gone too long," Agahnim murmured, turning his eyes carefully from his companion. "I do not remember half of this."

The light had revealed a string of bookshelves, cut into the walls, haphazardly piled with books, scrolls, and age-stiffened folios overstuffed with loose-leaf. The braziers illuminated cauldrons, clay pots, lengths of wood cut down to wands. But it was the heap of gifts in the center of the room that caught Agahnim's attention. Chests gaped, overflowing with bolts of cloth, fine books, precious metals, jewelry.

"So many chests." Agahnim crouched and touched a corner of rich fabric to his lips. It smelled of rose oil. "Your wife's dowry?"

Ganondorf did not dignify the question with a response. Agahnim continued, "Will she not note its absence?"

"It is customary for husband and wife to share the dowry in common."

"Not Gerudo custom, surely?"

"No. It is Hylian."

The wizard ducked his face, hiding the sudden curl of his lip. "But surely you do not hold with Hylian customs."

"I do when it suits me."

_As my Sheikah magic suits you_, Agahnim thought, _for all that you spit upon it._ His chest burned. _For all that you spit upon _me_._

"How did the temple look when you found it?" Ganondorf's voice cut into Agahnim's reverie.

Agahnim hunched his shoulders. "I did not get so close as to see it."

"Why not?"

"It is… entombed in a mountain hollow. By rockslides or mudslides over the centuries." He opened his hands. "My spells had not the power to unearth it.

"And even if I could, the legends… the legends do not lie when they say that the temple sleeps in shadow. There was a… heaviness upon that place. A _darkness_. I do not wonder at it." His voice dropped. "It was in that hollow, legends say, that the Sheikah met their end."

Ganondorf refolded the map. "You are frightened of shadows, man?"

Agahnim looked at the floor. "No. I am not."

"It does not matter." Ganondorf's manner grew suddenly brisk. "You have done as I asked."

The king's words drew Agahnim up short. "Do you no longer require my services, Dragmire?"

"I do not. Come." Ganondorf gestured toward a small bookshelf. Leather-bound volumes similar to the one he had tossed before Agahnim three years ago crowded it. "There are the books I promised you," he said. "Take what you will."

He looked away as the wizard moved with toward the shelves. Agahnim passed his hand along the flaking spines. His head felt weightless, detached. How long—how _fruitlessly?_—had he searched for books such as these? He could not begin to count the months, the years of frustration he had suffered, discovering another Sheikah burial ground only to discover that it had been gutted, robbed, desecrated. No love had been lost between the Gerudo and the Sheikah, legends said. Agahnim did not doubt that the Gerudo had had some hand in plundering what the slaughtered Sheikah had left behind.

He started to pluck a book from the shelf. But he found, suddenly that he could not.

"But Dragmire." He turned toward the king. "What of the Shadow Temple?"

"What of it?"

"Do you really mean to enter it? To wake the shadow that sleeps within?"

Ganondorf's smile was frigid. "I do not seek the temple for my private amusement."

"But I have told you. It is impassible."

"Not impassible," said Ganondorf, "to Gerudo magic."

Agahnim inhaled the reek of potions that poisoned the air. "Even if you do unearth the temple, how will you enter it?" he said, with a shudder. "The legends say only one who holds the Ocarina of the Royal Family of Hyrule may gain entrance—and whether such a thing exists, what man can say? Only a gods-blessed Hylian may play the Ocarina with any result, anyhow."

"Ah, yes. The gods-blessed Hylian. Will Hyrule _ever_ have enough of the gods-blessed Hylian?" Ganondorf regarded Agahnim with a withering glance. "If they are so godsdamned _blessed_, why, then, did they sell me this?"

The king muttered a word and traced his fingers across a sealed drawer. It opened beneath his touch. He drew forth a small, blue object and held it up for Agahnim's inspection. The wizard stepped forward, squinting—and then froze, his mouth ajar.

"_Gods_," he breathed. "The Ocarina."

"Yes," said Ganondorf. "The Ocarina."

Weightlessness had returned, again, to Agahnim's skull, except this time his entire body felt detached, as if he were floating.

"Are you sure it is the Ocarina?"

"We shall see," Ganondorf said. "I must see a man about it, before I am certain."

Agahnim met the king's eyes. "So you really do mean to open the temple." Ganondorf inclined his head. "But the gods-blessed Hylian. Who will play the Ocarina?"

A smile curved Ganondorf's mouth. Agahnim could not be certain if he imagined the indulgence that tinged it.

"I have my Hylian," Ganondorf said, his voice low. "I married her last night."

**oOo**

The command to leave the Spirit Temple came, as it inevitably would, in the middle of breakfast.

"Elder Kotake, tell me." Nabooru rubbed the bridge of her nose, ignoring both the retreat of the runner who had delivered the message, and the shushed footsteps of an acolyte setting the table with flatbread, cheese, and date wine. "Is Ganondorf rash, crazed, or simply old?"

Kotake pursed her lips. "What does age have to do with anything, girl?"

The two women sat in a chamber that overlooked the oasis. The sand gleamed white, like crushed glass; already Nabooru could see veiled servants leading horses to the front steps. She snapped to her feet.

"Something, surely." She began to pace. "What in the name of the goddesses is he doing? What does he mean by cutting his time here short?"

Kotake eyed the younger woman over her date wine. "It is his prerogative."

"But what does he mean by it?"

"Not being him, I cannot say."

Nabooru halted before the elder and knelt so that the women were eye to eye. "What does he mean by _any_ of it?" Her voice was low, urgent. "By cutting his stay among the Hylians short? By insisting on marrying their princess here? He isn't—" She paused and opened her hands in helpless gesture. "He isn't like I remember. Before his campaigns."

Kotake's eyes softened. "You cannot expect him to remain the same, Nabooru."

"I can expect him to make sense."

Kotake snorted and returned to her food. "_That_ you cannot."

"Why not?"

"Do not be stupid, girl. You have been among Hylian men."

Her words startled a joyless laugh from Nabooru. "But Ganondorf is not Hylian, Elder Kotake." Her glance narrowed into slyness. "You all keep telling me that."

"It does not change the fact that he is still a man," Kotake mumbled around a mouthful of bread.

Nabooru laughed again, but the sound was curt and hard. "And suddenly men are all the same? Unless Gerudo men are less the same than others?"

Kotake eyed her with some disdain. "You wanted answers and I gave you answers. If you will now play the child, take your meal elsewhere."

Naboou clasped her hands. "My apologies. It is just that you have lost me."

"Why? You are a smart girl."

"It does not mean I cannot be confused." Her expression grew contemplative. "You say I cannot expect Ganondorf to make sense because he is a man. And yet we jump upon his commands."

"We do not _jump_, Nabooru."

"Oh yes, Elder Kotake. We jump."

"In what way?"

Nabooru sat upon the floor and began to count off her fingers. "We do not question him. Not to any effect, that is. His word is our law."

"Were he a woman, his word would be law still."

"Would it?"

Kotake was still for a moment. "Yes."

"We have other laws. Traditions. Does his word have greater authority than these things?"

"He does not contravene our laws."

"And yet he contravene our traditions."

"Traditions are not laws."

"The Consort's Corridor is our tradition. No explicit law governs it." Nabooru lowered her hands to her lap; her eyes grew sad. "Our time in this temple is our tradition. No law governs it."

Kotake sucked her teeth with a sound of exasperation. "Any traditions he does not keep, Nabooru, are not vital to our survival as a people. He does nothing _wrong_."

"But he would not have done these things before his campaigns, Elder Kotake, that is what I am _saying_. The campaigns changed him. I understood him, before he rode off to war."

Kotake pinched her lips together for the space of a heartbeat. "Did you truly?"

Nabooru tilted her head. "What—?"

A timid knock at the door interrupted her. The former regent scrambled to her feet. "Yes?"

"Lady Nabooru?" The Consort's voice drifted in, frail and barely audible. "May I enter?"

"Of course, of course! No need to ask."

Zelda entered, with her hands clasped before her. Her hair was a tangled halo of watered down gold, her eyes wide and staring. She was still dressed in a sleeping shift. Kotake sighed, as if the girl's clothes and bowed shoulders disappointed her, but still she rose and inclined her head. "Good morning, your Majesty," she said. Nabooru echoed her greeting.

"Yes." Zelda's face was pinched with anxiety. "Thank you."

There was a moment of silence. Did Hylians greet one another in the mornings? Nabooru wondered.

"Nabooru." Zelda's voice brought her back to attention. "May I speak with you?"

Nabooru chuckled. "You are speaking with me now. Come." She gestured to the table. "Eat with us."

"No thank you. I—" The consort's eyes shifted to Kotake. "May we speak in private?"

"We _are_ in private."

Zelda's mouth opened and closed, like a fish upon a land. Her eyes darted between Kotake and Nabooru.

"I will go," Kotake said.

She rose. Zelda blushed and mumbled something that might have been, "My apologies," but the elder simply bowed her head. "Your Majesty," she said and disappeared through the door. Nabooru raised her eyebrows in wonder.

"What could you not say before Elder Kotake, Prin—Majesty?"

"The courtiers." Zelda spoke the word in a rush. "My lord wishes for me to dismiss the envoys and courtiers by tonight. He said they have overstayed their welcome."

"_What_?"

Zelda held out a hand. "Please do not be angry."

"What else did he say?"

"That my presence, as a Hylian, would satisfy the provision that a Hylian envoy must remain in Gerudo Valley."

Nabooru's mouth worked. "Except it will _not_. Gods. This is too much." She took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I must speak with him."

"Nabooru?" When the once regent neither glanced up nor answered, Zelda touched her shoulder. "Please do not speak with my lord just yet."

This caught Nabooru's attention. Her eyes opened with a snap. "Why not?"

"Because I—I wish to speak with the courtiers and envoys myself. I do not want them sent away."

"This is why I must speak with the king, then, your Majesty."

"I do not think he will listen."

Nabooru began to object. But even as she did, stray memories clouded her mind, invalidating her protest. Ganondorf had not listened when she objected to his rushed sojourn in Lanayru, had not listened when she begged him to deal carefully with the Hylians. Why would he listen to her now?

She felt Zelda's soft, dry touch upon her hand and blinked down at the Consort. The child looked so ridiculously slight and pale, standing there, like some little girl's porcelain doll. She was hardly ready to be any man's wife, let alone a king's consort. The former regent's hand jerked to Zelda's cheek; she cupped it with loose fingers and shook her head once, twice, three times. She wanted to say something comforting, but her mind was empty of comforting thoughts.

"If I do not speak with him before nightfall, we may lose our chance to gently treat your father's envoys, Majesty. We will have to send them into the desert with little ceremony or preparation."

"No," said Zelda, "we will not."

"Your Majesty?"

"I said that I do not want them sent away. I mean to keep them here, Lady Nabooru."

Nabooru's mouth tightened, bitter with memory. "I know the king. Once he has commanded a thing, he will ensure that it is carried out."

"I mean to keep them with me." Zelda pressed Nabooru's hand, her voice urgent in a way Nabooru found surprising. "I mean to house them in the Consort's Corridor, until such a time that we may speak sense into my lord."

The proposal caught Nabooru off guard. "The Corridor?"

"_Yes_, the Corridor. It is mine to rule as I wish, is it not?"

"But if the king discovers that they are still in the Fortress—"

"He _will not know_." Zelda's clasp tightened so suddenly that her nails bit into Nabooru's skin. "Not until the time is right for us. Not until we decide to tell him."

Nabooru gazed down at the Consort for a long moment. "You would do that?"

"I would. I am." Zelda paused. "I need your help."

Slowly, Nabooru bowed her head. Her eyes never shifted from Zelda's face. "Then you will have it. All the help I can give."

Someone had to save Ganondorf from himself. Kotake would not. So Nabooru would.

**oOo**

The Hylian courtiers and envoys complained. Zelda wished that they would stop mobbing her horse and protesting that they left unfinished breakfasts behind. The return trek to Gerudo Valley had enough peril, as it was—Leever tracks had been spotted in the sand, and the scent of the beasts made the horses skittish.

"I am sorry," Zelda kept repeating, "but his Majesty the King Dragmire would have us depart for the Fortress. Please do not fret. The king has asked me to throw a feast in your honor."

The reassurance of food silenced her father's courtiers; she watched them fall back into line with self-satisfied smirks. She wished Nabooru rode beside her, to serve a buffer between her and the stream of high-born Hylians, but Nabooru was on the lookout for Leevers—one of the few members of the party equipped to do so.

The next challenge presented itself when the party reached the Fortress. Zelda sent a runner to the kitchens, with instructions that a feast be prepared for the evening. The runner returned barely five minutes later to deliver the regrets of the kitchen staff. There was little food to be had. Her Majesty's wedding had put a dent in the provisions that it would take some time to replenish. The runner delivered the message with heavy-lidded disdain, though she quickly concealed her glance by casting down her eyes. She spoke in a tone of accusation, as if Zelda should have already been aware of this.

"What food remains from my wedding feast?" Zelda inquired. "Might the kitchens make a meal of it?"

Again, the kitchens sent their regrets. There was nothing left of Her Majesty's wedding feast.

"What happened to it?" Zelda cried.

This Nabooru could answer. "We Gerudo eat well when the opportunity presents itself," she said, opening her hands in a gesture that Zelda was learning meant regret. "What remains goes to the women and children who could not attend—the old, those who are too young or too sick. Otherwise…"

Zelda bit her lip. "Have I done this terribly wrong?" she asked, in a breathless voice. "Was asking that the kitchens prepare a feast… extravagant?"

"You did not know," Nabooru said. "Though I wish you had told me you planned to feast your father's men."

"I am sorry."

"Don't be." Nabooru gave a heavy sigh. "You did not know. I should have told you."

The debacle of the feast nearly killed Zelda's determination to execute her plan. The mortification of having assumed that there would be food, and plenty of it, gnawed at her, and she longed to retreat to her Corridor and forget her error. Perhaps she would do as her husband commanded, dismiss the courtiers and envoys by tonight. If she sent runners to them now, they would have some time to prepare for their departure. She would not have to face them, if she sent runners. Perhaps the men would forget her promises of a feast. Perhaps their dismissal would go smoothly, without resentment.

But then she thought of spending long, lonely hours in the Consort's Corridor, with no one for company but Gerudo who would resent her for her assumptions—so _Hylian_, so _privileged_, when she was not even their _queen_. Her dismay hardened her resolve.

"I received several caskets of wine as wedding presents," she told Nabooru. "Will the courtiers like that?"

Nabooru cracked a smile. "I do not know of many men who wouldn't."

"Then they shall feast on wine."

Nabooru snorted.

"Lady Nabooru?"

"Not enough, I hope, to get them drunk."

Zelda stiffened. "Of course not." But then she relaxed, and a rueful smile shadowed her mouth. "But I did mean to ask: how much wine would be too much?"

She sent runners with invitations to every Hylian in residence. By evening, every courtier, envoy, and sage was gathered beneath the soft, brazier light of the Consort's Corridor, sipping sweet wine from an assortment of Gerudo chalices and clay tumblers.

The miscellany of drinking vessels distressed Zelda. She asked her handmaidens if there were not better goblets to be had among her wedding gifts and dowry, but the pair of handmaidens who had fetched the tumblers shrank from her; they said they did not know.

"Did you not look?" Zelda asked.

The girls looked at one another, their mouths stubbornly shut.

"Please ask Lady Nabooru to look, then," Zelda said with a sigh. "There were twelve brace of goblets in my dowry. Please ask her to bring them."

When the handmaidens had gone, she moved among her guests, clutching a goblet from which she dared not drink. The men nodded and smiled, congratulated her on her marriage, the splendor of her rooms, the excellence of her wine. There were no more than twenty people in the room and yet Zelda felt stifled, pressed in by their eager talk. She wished that she had not sent Nabooru away.

But even as she thought this, she caught sight of the former regent striding toward her. Nabooru's face was grim.

"Prince—your Majesty." Nabooru slipped in between the chattering courtiers and bent to speak into Zelda's ear. "Your dowry has vanished."

"Vanished?" Zelda's stomach sank.

"I went through all the rooms, but I could find nothing."

The women looked at one another, Zelda's expression helpless, Nabooru's brow furrowed.

"I will look into it," Zelda said at last, voice faint. "But I must address my father's men."

Zelda and Nabooru moved to the outskirts of the throng, and Zelda set aside her goblet. "My lords." Nabooru lifted her voice so that it rang out above the hum of conversation. "Her Majesty would have a word."

She spoke with such loud command that the voices of the courtiers died away. Heads turned. Zelda clasped her hands convulsively, then just as hurriedly separated them. She could not let them see how much their attention unnerved her.

"My lords." Her voice was reedy in the silence. "I wish, first, to thank you for your attendance, both this evening and since my departure from my father's house in Lanayru. I have been most pleased to have the honor of your company."

Polite applause and gratified murmurs broke out.

"It pains me that I will not long have the pleasure of your society after tonight."

Faces grew dark with bewilderment. "Your Ladyship?" a voice called—a courtier, with a chalice halfway to his lips. Zelda flexed her fingers until they crackled.

"My wedding is now concluded. The treaty, between my lord husband and my lord father, is signed. My lord husband has requested that we return to daily business. As such, he asks that you elect a party of envoys to remain here in Gerudo Valley, as stipulated by the treaty. I wish, those of you who choose not to remain, a safe journey home. I shall arrange an escort of my lord husband's finest warriors to take you as far as Lake Hylia."

A silence greeted this announcement, so deep that Zelda began to crackle her toes in the silk of her slippers.

"His Lordship could not deliver this announcement himself?" someone asked. Zelda winced.

"My lord husband wished to have the honor of addressing you," she said. "But he… had to see to business—terribly vital business—he sends his most sincere apologies and hopes that he will have the pleasure of seeing you off tomorrow morning."

The men accepted this explanation with an ease she did not expect; she heard someone snort, "Vital business in_deed_. I suppose those Zuna desertmen will not be ignored any longer."

"Kicked down his door, probably," another person muttered. Zelda heard stifled laughter, saw men exchanging knowing looks. She glanced at Nabooru for clarification, but the Gerudo's face was blank.

"I will leave you to elect the three envoys you wish to remain," Zelda continued. At the sound of her voice, the courtiers again grew silent. "When you have made your decision, I would ask that the chosen men move their belongings to this Corridor. You will be provided with rooms. The rest of you should prepare for an early departure."

She turned to Nabooru, when the room began to fill again with the courtiers' voices. Nabooru squeezed her shoulder.

"How are you feeling?"

Zelda reached for the chalice of wine she had abandoned; she drank down a mouthful, and Nabooru chuckled humorlessly.

"How will I feed them?" Zelda asked, very low. "Or keep my attendants from talking?" She stared, glumly, down into her chalice. "Do I permit them to keep their horses? Do I send all their horses away? I do not want the stable hands talking. Will they?" She took another draft. "I did not think of that. Why did I not—"

"You will not have to hide them long," Nabooru said. "We will speak with the king soon, yes?"

"When the time is right."

"When is that?"

Zelda looked at the ground. "I do not know yet."

"You must make up your mind soon, your Majesty. Now come. The matter of your dowry distresses me."

Zelda set her chalice aside and followed Nabooru through each room of the Corridor. The furnishings had not changed since the first time Zelda had set foot here; they were Spartan, silent, and cold with the coming night. Her gifts and dowry had completely vanished. Only the casks of wine remained.

"Where has everything _gone_?" Zelda cried, when they returned to her bedchamber. She slumped onto her bed. "Was it not brought here yesterday?"

"I spoke to the attendants," Nabooru said. "Neither the handmaidens nor the guards saw anyone either bringing the dowry or taking it away."

"We must ask whoever saw to the horses, the luggage."

"Your Majesty?"

Zelda and Nabooru glanced at the doorway, to find a handmaiden outlined in brazier light.

"Your Majesty, the Hylians request your attendance."

"They must have chosen their envoys," Zelda said, rising.

When she and Nabooru emerged, a courtier stepped up to them and bowed. "If it please your Ladyship." He gestured to three older, grizzled men behind him. "We have made our decision."

Zelda glanced over the men, distracted. One of them was the sage, tonsured head gleaming dully, eyes downcast, as if it pained him to look at her.

"Of course," she said. "You have chosen well."

She sent attendants to move the envoys' things to the Corridor; the rest of the company she bade a good night. She was watching the last group of courtiers make their bows and depart, when she caught sight of a stocky Gerudo in white trousers striding toward her.

"Your Majesty?" the woman called. "His Highness the King Ganondorf Dragmire requests your presence."

Zelda jumped. She had not expected to be addressed in such rough, blaring tones. "Of course," she said. "I will fetch a shawl." The air was cool enough to give her gooseflesh.

"Your Majesty." The woman wrapped callused fingers around Zelda's forearm. "He requests your _immediate_ presence. If you will follow me."

"Go." Nabooru had slipped up behind her, prodded her shoulder. "I will bring you a shawl." Her eyes shifted to the stocky Gerudo. "Aveil."

The woman snapped a salute. "Lady Nabooru."

"Thank you." Zelda turned a faint, trembling smile on Nabooru. The former regent motioned her away, and with a final look back at her friend, Zelda hastened down the hall after the Gerudo Aveil.


End file.
